The Raptors’ NBA Finals upset bid has been a ratings hit in Canada, but the story has been far different in the United States.
Friday’s Raptors-Warriors NBA Finals Game 4 earned a 7.6 rating and 12.79 million viewers on ABC, down 18% in ratings and 21% in viewership from last year (9.3, 16.24M) and down 29% and 33% respectively from 2017 (10.7, 19.06M), both of which were Warriors-Cavaliers games.
Toronto’s win ranks as the lowest rated and least-watched NBA Finals game in 12 years, since Spurs-Cavaliers Game 4 in 2007 (6.5, 9.91M). Prior to this year, no Finals game since 2007 had fallen below the 7.8 and 13.04 million for Magic-Lakers Game 1 in 2009. Keep in mind Game 4 was just the fourth Friday night Finals game since 2003.
Game 4 snapped a streak of 67 straight NBA Finals games with at least 13 million viewers.
Dating back to 1988, only 14 NBA Finals games have had a lower rating than Friday’s 7.6, all of them involving the mid-2000s San Antonio Spurs. No World Series game has had a lower rating or viewership since Giants-Royals five years ago.
This year’s NBA Finals is the first to include the Raptors, whose Canadian fanbase is not measured by Nielsen. Game 4 had a Canadian audience of 4.9 million across TSN, CTV2, RDS, and a Canadian feed of ABC, up nearly 600% from last year (700K) and a record for the NBA in the country.
If one were to combine U.S. and Canadian viewership, the Game 4 audience would equal 17.7 million viewers, up 4% from last year (17.0M). Friday marked the first time in the NBA Finals that the two-nation figure exceeded last year’s series. The two-nation audience would also exceed the U.S.-only audience for Game 4 in 2016 (16.6M) and from 2005-14.
In the U.S. alone, Game 4 had a 4.3 rating in adults 18-49 — down 20% from last year (5.4) and down 37% from 2017 (6.8). The 4.3 is the lowest for any NBA Finals game since Game 4 in 2007 (4.0), falling below the previous low set by Game 3 (4.6), which itself had fallen below the previous lows set in Games 1 and 2 (4.8).
Game 4 also had a 3.6 rating in adults 18-34, down 25% from last year (4.8), down 41% from 2017 (6.1), and the lowest for any finals game in that demo since 2007. Each successive game has set a new 12-year low in that demo, with Game 1 the first to do so (4.2), followed by Game 2 (4.1), Game 3 (3.8), and now Game 4.
Each game of the NBA Finals has declined 22% from the overnight to the final rating, marking the steepest declines for any Finals game since 2003. Last year’s four games declined between 17-19% from the overnight. The first four games in 2017 fell between 15-16%.
[Numbers from Nielsen via Programming Insider 6.10, NBA]
