Monday’s NBA Finals telecast drew the largest TV audience for a finals game three in almost 30 years.
ABC and ESPN‘s broadcast of the San Antonio Spurs’ 115-111 victory over the New York Knicks averaged 23.79 million viewers, including 1.1 million for an alternate telecast on ESPN. The last time the third game of the series had more viewers was back in 1998, when Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls put their infamous 96-54 beatdown of the Utah Jazz en route to a second three-peat as NBA champions.
Monday’s game peaked with 26.3 million viewers at 11:15 p.m. ET, the closing minutes of the contest. In ABC’s 24-year history of broadcasting the NBA Finals, the previous high for a game three was 20.05 million viewers in 2017 (Golden State-Cleveland).
Through three games — the series will go at least five after San Antonio’s win Monday —the NBA Finals are averaging about 19.1 million viewers. That’s second only to the 2017 finals, which averaged 19.48 million over their first three games.
This year’s finals are currently bringing in more than double the amount of viewers than the 2025 series, which featured the Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers, teams from two of the NBA’s smaller media markets. San Antonio is a relatively small market as well, but the Spurs have both a championship history (five titles since 1999) and one of the game’s biggest stars in Victor Wembanyama. New York, of course, is the biggest TV market in the U.S. by a pretty wide margin and is trying to end a 53-year title drought.
Game four of the series is Wednesday night in New York, with game five scheduled for Saturday in San Antonio. If necessary, games six and seven would happen June 16 and 19.