While the Indiana Pacers staved off elimination in the NBA Finals on Thursday night to force the series to a decisive Game 7 against the Oklahoma City Thunder, there is some uncertainty surrounding the television ratings. Through the first five games of the NBA Finals, the best-of-seven series is averaging 9.18 million viewers on ABC, which is indicative of a 19% year-over-year decline. Although viewership for Thursday’s game is not yet available, the contest ended with a 17-point victory for the Pacers and was not particularly close by halftime. Shan Shariff gave his thoughts on the series during the morning show on 105.3 The Fan, in which he explained that the Thunder season would be a complete failure if the team loses Game 7 at home.
Shariff proceeded to ask producer Bobby Belt how the ratings for the series have looked thus far, to which he affirmed that the numbers were not good. None of the first five games within the NBA Finals have passed the 10 million-viewer threshold, and the fifth game of the series was the least-watched iteration of such since 2003 when excluding the 2020 bubble. The matchup attained a total of 9.54 million viewers on ABC, and while it was the most-watched game of the series at the moment, it was still down 22% from the previous year.
“If you go to baseball, the Rangers-Diamondbacks World Series, the highest they had was 11.4 [million], that was Game 5, but other than that was 9.1 [million],” said RJ Choppy, co-host of the show. “Last year, the lowest was 13 million – 13 million. In the previous year, the lowest for baseball was 10.7 [million], so we are talking about being off the pace. This is bad, this is bad.”
In the preceding three years, the NBA Finals averaged more than 10 million viewers per series, and the trend continues going back to 2008 excluding the seasons directly impacted by the global pandemic (2020, 2021). For the last instance in which the NBA Finals reached a seventh game between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors in 2016, the game averaged 31.02 million viewers on ABC. As a whole, the series finished with 20.28 million viewers, marking the most-viewed NBA Finals since 1998 when Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls defeated the Utah Jazz in six games.
“Well people have been missing out in my opinion,” Shariff said of the NBA Finals. “This is probably because I am betting every which way possible… but it’s been a fun Finals, it’s been a good Finals. Much better than the Stanley Cup Final, which I thought was going to be much better than the NBA one.”
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