Game 7 of Thunder-Pacers was most-watched NBA Finals game since 2019
The NBA viewership story was bailed out by the two most beautiful words in sports: Game 7.
Oklahoma City's 103-91 win over Indiana on Sunday night averaged 16,353,000 viewers on ABC and ESPN+ and peaked with 19,281,000 viewers from 9:45-10 p.m. ET. That made Sunday night's game the most-watched NBA Finals game since Game 6 of the 2019 NBA Finals between the Raptors and Warriors, which drew 18.3 million viewers.
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The seven-game series finished with an average of 10.266 million viewers, down from the 11.3 million average for the five-game series last year between the Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks.
Was market size a factor? Indianapolis is the 25th-largest media market in the country and Oklahoma City is No. 47. The series was trending much further down before Game 7's big number. Clearly, a significant number of people decided to watch this series only for its final game. Sports Business Journal's Austin Karp offered an interesting comparison for context: The NBA's Game 7 viewership was roughly in line with the 16.6 million viewers who watched Texas-Georgia in the SEC Football Championship in December.
ESPN said its audience for the entire 2025 NBA Playoffs across ESPN and ABC — 34 games — averaged 6,118,000 viewers, up 10 percent from 2024.
The league's television story will have a new look when play begins in the fall, with the NBA renewing its partnership with ESPN/ABC and forming new agreements with NBCU and Amazon as part of a combined $77 billion deal which starts with the 2025-26 season and runs through the 2035-36 season.
(Top photo of Pascal Siakam and Jalen Williams: Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)
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