The Oklahoma City Thunder took home the NBA Championship on Sunday night, and their 103-91 triumph over the Indiana Pacers became the most-watched NBA Finals game since 2019, according to preliminary measurement from Nielsen.
Measured across both ABC and ESPN+, the game hit an average audience of 16.4 million viewers, with a peak of 19.3 million viewers during the 15-minute segment beginning at 9:45 p.m. ET. These totals cap off an already highly viewed seven-game series, which averaged 10.3 million viewers overall and made up the seven most-watched broadcasts on TV since early may. The NBA Playoffs as a whole averaged 6.1 million viewers across 34 games this year, which represents a 10% uptick from last year.
Sunday night marked the Thunder’s first championship win since the team relocated to Oklahoma City in 2008; they were previously located in Seattle and known as the SuperSonics. And it was still only the franchise’s second time at the top of the league, with the SuperSonics’ sole championship win having come in 1979 against the Washington Bullets, now known as the Washington Wizards.
This season, the Thunder won 68 regular season games, tying for the fifth-highest total in NBA history. The team also broke the record for highest average margin of victory, with victories ahead of their opponents by about 12.9 points per game. Thunder point guard and shooting guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was named MVP, becoming the second-youngest in the league’s history at age 26. He is also a three-time NBA All-Star and a three-time All-NBA First Team member.
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