If still on the low side, Game 2 of the NBA Finals showed solid improvement over the opener and delivered the league’s top audience post-hiatus.
Thursday’s Bucks-Suns NBA Finals Game 2 averaged a 5.1 rating and 9.38 million viewers on ABC, up 42% in ratings and 41% in viewership from Heat-Lakers in the “bubble” last October, which took place on the same day that the president of the United States was hospitalized (3.6, 6.67M), but down 36% and 32% respectively from Warriors-Raptors in June 2019 (8.0, 13.89M).
The Suns’ win, which peaked with 11.1 million viewers from 10:45-11 PM ET, ranks as the most-watched NBA game since Game 6 of the 2019 Finals. The previous high over that span was 8.96 million for Game 5 of last year’s Finals. Excluding football, it ranks as the eighth-most watched sportscast in the sixteen months since sports went on hiatus in March of last year.
Game 2 viewership increased ten percent from Game 1, the biggest rise from Game 1 to Game 2 of an NBA Finals since 2010 (+12%). Last season, Game 2 viewership declined 12% from Game 1 to Game 2, and then a further 10% from Game 2 to Game 3, owing largely to the unusual circumstances of the president’s health scare and rare Sunday Night Football competition.
Game 2 ranks as the first Finals game since the league returned from hiatus that does not rank among the ten least-watched on record, topping Game 1 on Tuesday, each of last year’s six games, and two games each of the 2003 and 2007 series. It ranks as the 11th-least watched Finals game on record and the fourth-least watched Game 2.
It outdrew four of last year’s six World Series games, including the corresponding Game 2 (9.11M).
Locally, Game 2 averaged a 24.9 rating in Phoenix and a 24.8 in Milwaukee, each surpassing Game 1 as the markets’ highest NBA ratings since 2000 and 2001, respectively.
Figures for Sunday’s Game 3 will be posted when available.
[Nielsen estimates from ESPN, Nielsen]
