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The NBA Finals closed out its battle between the Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder with the most-watched game the tournament has seen in six years.
Sunday’s Game 7 brought in an average viewership of 16.35 million on ABC and ESPN+, according to preliminary figures from Nielsen, marking the biggest audience for an NBA finals game in 2019. The game peaked with 19.28 million viewers from 9:45-10 p.m. ET.
Final viewership figures for the game will be available on Tuesday, and this story will be updated when the figures are available.
With Game 7, which saw the Thunder take victory over the Pacers, the NBA finals averaged 10.27 viewers across its seven broadcasts, with the finals accounting for the seven most-watched broadcasts across all TV programs since the first week of May.
The average viewership for the entirety of 2025 NBA playoffs, which included 34 games, averaged 6.12 viewers across ABC and ESPN. Viewership for the 2025 playoffs was up 10% from 2024.
The matchup between the Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder brought in two of the smallest cities in the league — with Indiana and Oklahoma City ranking No. 25 and 47, respectively, out of the more than 200 individually measured designated market areas (or DMAs) in the U.S. — giving the NBA Finals a hefty feat to draw in eyeballs.
The first two games of the NBA Finals averaged 8.84 million viewers, scoring 8.91 million and 8.76 million, respectively, with viewership for Game 2 falling nearly 30% below last year’s matchup between the Celtics and the Mavericks. Ratings continued to trend downward by Game 4, which averaged 9.41 million viewers, which was down 2% from last year’s Celtics-Mavericks. Like Game 2, Game 4 became the least-watched Game 4 on record, excluding the pandemic-ridden 2020 NBA Finals.
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