How to Watch the 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee
The finalists of the Scripps National Spelling Bee will be vying for the chance to win $50,000 on Thursday night.
This year's contest celebrates 100 years since the first spelling bee was held on June 17, 1925. The annual competition has grown into a nationally televised event that draws competitors from around the nation and the globe. Contestants must be under the age of 16 and participate in regional competitions for the chance to qualify for the national championship.
The finals will air live from 8 to 10 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday on Ion, a broadcast network owned by Scripps Networks. The bee's website has a list of streaming platforms that include the network and a tool to find your local channel after inputting your ZIP code.
Viewers can also watch on the bee's website.
The New York Times will begin live coverage at 6 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday.
This year's spellers have come from all 50 states; the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands; and several other nations. They spent the last several days competing in preliminary spelling and vocabulary rounds at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Md., just outside Washington.
Last year's top prize went to 12-year-old Bruhat Soma of St. Petersburg, Fla., after he correctly spelled the word abseil during the competition's second-ever spell-off. Bruhat, who had tied for 74th place at the 2023 bee and 163rd place in 2022, told The Times after his victory that winning the spelling bee was 'like a dream come true.'
'Instead of going down, I decided to be really motivated by that,' Bruhat said of his previous attempts, 'so don't be discouraged by failure.'
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Chet Holmgren has provided key blocks at certain points and Alex Caruso turned into a key defender of three-time MVP Nikola Jokić in the Nuggets series. On the other side, Indiana has made a high-scoring offense a key part of its game. Most of it revolves around Haliburton, with his pin-point passing able to set up his teammates in good spots while Siakam provides a physical presence inside. Haliburton is averaging 18.8 points, 9.8 assists and 5.7 rebounds per game this postseason as Indiana has outgunned many of its opponents; in the 2025 postseason so far, the Pacers are 12-0 when they score 114 or more points but 0-4 when they don't hit the mark. 'When you get to this point of the season, it's two teams and it's one goal and so it becomes an all-or-nothing thing,' Carlisle said. 'And we understand the magnitude of the opponent. Oklahoma City has been dominant all year long – with capital letters in the word 'dominant.' 'Defensively, they're historically great and they got all kinds of guys that can score. It's two teams that have similar structures, slightly different styles.' The fate of this year's NBA title might revolve around one end of the court and whether Indiana can break down a stout OKC. The NBA Finals could be defined by the two star guards on display – Gilgeous-Alexander for the Thunder and Haliburton for the Pacers. Both were traded away from their first teams – Gilgeous-Alexander was traded from the Los Angeles Clippers and Haliburton from the Sacramento Kings – but have blossomed with their new teams. Gilgeous-Alexander is the league's MVP this season, beating out Jokić for his first award, after leading the league in scoring with 32.7 points per game. The 26-year-old is arguably one of the most unstoppable offensive forces in the NBA at the moment, but it has been a long road to get to this point. 'It's been a roller coaster,' Gilgeous-Alexander said earlier this week. 'I had nights where I thought I wasn't good at basketball, had nights where I thought I was the best player in the world before I was. It's been ups and downs. My mentality to try to stay level through it all really helped me. Once I figured that out, I really saw jumps in my game.' He added: 'All the moments I got, like, cut, traded, slighted, overlooked. But also all the joy, all the things that my family has comforted me in, all the life lessons. Everything that's turned me into the man and the human being that I am today.' It's been a similar journey for Haliburton, who had played second-fiddle in Sacramento to De'Aaron Fox. His trade to Indiana allowed him to express himself, and it's seen him turn into one of the best playmakers in the NBA. 'This is a franchise that took a chance on me, saw something that other people didn't see in me,' Haliburton said of the Pacers. 'Sometimes, I think they saw more in me than I saw in myself.' That doesn't mean he's universally loved around the league though, with The Athletic conducting an anonymous survey of NBA players who voted Haliburton as the league's most overrated player. Though his play and game-winners this postseason have surely changed some of those opinions. For the Thunder or Pacers to have any chance of winning this year's Larry O'Brien Trophy, it will likely rest on their star guards' shoulders to get them to the finish line.
