The New York Knicks didn’t just end a 53-year championship drought. They helped deliver the biggest NBA Finals television audience seen in nearly 30 years.
The five-game NBA Finals between the Knicks and San Antonio Spurs averaged 20.6 million viewers, making it the most-watched Finals since Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls faced the Utah Jazz in 1998, according to ESPN.
The championship-clinching Game 5 proved especially massive.
New York’s 94-90 victory averaged 24.5 million viewers across ABC and ESPN, the largest audience for a Game Five since the Bulls’ famous “Last Dance” championship run in 1998.
Viewership continued to climb as the game reached its dramatic conclusion. The broadcast peaked at 33 million viewers during the fourth quarter as Finals MVP Jalen Brunson delivered one of the defining performances in Knicks history.
Brunson scored 45 points and helped New York erase a 10-point deficit in the final quarter to secure the franchise’s first championship since 1973.
The numbers represent a significant milestone for the league.
This year’s Finals produced the highest average viewership of any NBA Finals since ABC and ESPN acquired broadcast rights in 2003. It also marked just the third Finals series since 1999 to average at least 20 million viewers.
The only other Finals to clear that mark during that span came during the peak of the Warriors-Cavaliers rivalry. Golden State’s five-game victory over Cleveland in 2017 averaged 20.47 million viewers, while Cleveland’s historic comeback win in the seven-game 2016 Finals averaged 20.2 million.
This year’s series also represented a dramatic increase from last season’s championship matchup between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers.
That seven-game series averaged 10.31 million viewers, meaning the Knicks-Spurs Finals essentially doubled last year’s audience.
The combination of New York’s massive market, the franchise’s decades-long championship drought and the emergence of stars such as Brunson and Victor Wembanyama helped create one of the most-watched NBA Finals in modern history.
Nearly three decades after Jordan’s final championship run captivated basketball fans, the Knicks and Spurs produced a Finals audience that finally approached those historic numbers.
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