For the second-straight game, the Knicks and Spurs delivered the largest NBA Finals audience since the days of LeBron James against Stephen Curry.
Friday’s Knicks-Spurs NBA Finals Game 2 averaged 16.43 million viewers on ABC, marking the largest audience for a Game 2 in the NBA Finals since the last of the four-straight Cavaliers-Warriors series in 2018 (18.75M). Viewership comfortably surpassed the previous high — 13.96 million for Warriors-Raptors in 2019 — by 18%.
The Knicks’ narrow win, which peaked with 19.42 million in the 11:15 PM ET quarter-hour, delivered the sixth-largest Game 2 audience of the past 25 years — behind the aforementioned four series and Heat-Thunder in 2012 (16.67M).
Overall, it delivered the third-largest NBA audience of any kind since 2019 — behind Game 1 the previous Wednesday (16.93M) and last year’s Game 7 (16.61M). Entering Game 6 of last year’s Finals, 34-straight NBA Finals games had failed to hit the 14 million mark. Now, three-straight have averaged more than 16 million. (Game 7 of this year’s Western Conference Finals also came close to that mark with 15.90 million on NBC, per Nielsen and Adobe Analytics.)
Note that Nielsen did not begin including out-of-home viewing in its estimates until 2020, only began doing so in 100 percent of markets a year ago, and is months into a new methodology that combines its traditional panel with “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes. Those changes will tend to skew comparisons, particularly to years prior to 2020. (Realistically, they are unlikely to make a difference in comparisons to any games since, save for last year’s Game 7.)
The Game 1 audience dipped 3% from Wednesday’s Game 1, in keeping with the decades-long trend for games on Friday nights. Of the 33 total Friday Finals games dating back to 1992, only seven have posted an increase over the prior contest. While there has been some thought that Friday — and Saturday — nights might be less of a ratings drag in the era of out-of-home viewing, that has not consistently shown to be the case. (The Finals is guaranteed a Saturday night Game 5 this weekend and could conclude with a Friday night Game 7.)
NBA Finals Friday night viewership compared to previous game
Even with the usual Friday dip, Game 2 still soared 88% over Pacers-Thunder last year, which took place a Sunday night — the most-watched night of the week (8.90M). It also jumped 75% from last year’s Friday night Game 4 (9.41M) and ranks as the most-watched Friday Finals game since Game 4 of the 2017 series (19.11M).
The Knicks-Spurs NBA Finals was averaging 16.68 million viewers on ABC through two games, up 89% from last year and the highest two-game average for the NBA Finals since Cavaliers-Warriors in 2018. (Figures for Monday’s Game 3 will be available Wednesday at the earliest.)
The two-game average also exceeds every World Series dating back to 2016, albeit with the usual caveats regarding Nielsen methodology. Last year’s Dodgers-Blue Jays Fall Classic averaged 12.5 million through two games. (Dodgers-Yankees two years ago averaged 14.5 million through two games, though before “Big Data”).
Locally, Game 1 averaged a 25.8 rating in San Antonio, down from the team’s previous Finals opener in 2014 against the Heat (32.7). New York turned in a 14.7, the market’s highest yet for a Knicks game on ABC, with the caveat that non-Knicks games have drawn bigger numbers — including Cavaliers-Warriors Game 7 in 2016 (20.3). (Local figures for the Knicks’ previous NBA Finals Game 1 on NBC in 1999 were not immediately available.)
