The NBA has a Ratings Problem: a FansOnlySportz Special Report

Zak Drapeau
1 day ago
6 min read

Updated: 12 hours ago

by Zak Drapeau 6/1/2025 FansOnlySportz

The 2025 NBA Finals will begin in a few days between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers and while this should be a fantastic matchup ON the court the NBA may have some real troubles with the series OFF the court.

NBA Markets

The harsh truth for the NBA and its broadcasting partners is that the upcoming 2025 NBA Finals is likely to lose A LOT of money in ad revenue because of an estimated low viewership. The truth is that no matter how talented both squads are their local markets are among the lowest in the league.

In an updated NBA Team Market Size Ranking by HoopSocial.com, Oklahoma City was ranked as the 26th out of 28 NBA markets in size with a 755K TV Market Size and Indiana was ranked 22nd with a 1.183 Million TV Market Size. For reference New York and LA were ranked 1st and 2nd with a 7.453 Million and 5.735 Million TV Market Size respectively. The full ranking can be shown in the link at the top of the paragraph.

If you are confused by these numbers, you're not alone. The visuals of both the Paycom Center sold out with 90% of the fans wearing blue and the Gainbridge Fieldhouse equally as packed repping their yellow would have you assuming their fanbases are rabid. And you'd be right but fanbases and TV Markets aren't always parallel.

A Look into the 2025 NBA Playoffs

The 2025 NBA Playoffs started extremely well with viewership through the first two rounds averaging 4.88 Million, which is the second best mark in 15 years. Series like Timberwolves-Lakers, Timberwolves-Warriors and ESPECIALLY Celtics-Knicks are the standouts in the first two rounds. The viewership numbers through this point were so good that it was even up 12% from 2024's totals.

So if the first two rounds had such good viewership why will the NBA Finals come up short? The biggest markets in the playoffs were from teams that have already been eliminated, mainly the Knicks, Celtics, Warriors and Lakers.

Eastern Conference Championships Viewers

Without the ratings for last night's Game 6 between the Pacers and Knicks, we'll have to only take the figures for the series' first 5 games (though it should be noted that the estimated report of the game's viewership was 6.74 Million viewers.)

The series has averaged 6.74 million viewers through 5 games, 6.6 Million in Game 1, 6.7 Million in Game 2, 7.09 Million in Game 3, 6.7 Million in Game 4 and 6.72 Million in Game 5. The mark is a good-to-great figure and the 4th highest for the Eastern Conference since 2015. For reference, the 2024 ECF between the Celtics and Pacers averaged 6.31 million viewers (a 7.15% increase,) This point will again insist on the importance that the New York market had on this series and the first 3 rounds of these playoffs.

The 2 highest-viewed games of this series happened to be the 2 games the Knicks would win, but is that really a coincidence? This series would also be very unpredictable due to multiple late comebacks from both teams. A nature that led to higher views and a factor that was severely lacking in the opposite series (more on that later.)

The 6.74 Million viewers may not jump out at you when looking at the previous 4 years but it's VERY IMPORTANT TO NOTE this was the highest viewed ECF series that DID NOT GO TO 7 GAMES since 2014. For reference, Game 7 in the 2024 ECF brought in 12 Million viewers and Game 7 for the 2023 ECF brought in 9.875 Million. If this series had seen the Knicks rally back to force a Game 7 after being down 3-1 we could have seen viewership even higher.

Western Conference Championship Viewers

There's no way to sugarcoat it... As far as advertisers are concerned the WCF flopped. Compared to the 6.74 Million average for the ECF, the WCF averaged 5.386 Million viewers through its 5 games.

If we don't count the 2020 WCF during the first summer of COVID-19 (which was a huge outlier in viewership for both conferences,) the 2025 Western Conference Finals were the least viewed in the last 12 years. The series peaked in Game 4 with 6.53 Million viewers, which was less than the least viewed game in the ECF this year.

You can make an argument for extraneous factors contributing to the low viewership in this series, like the play style of star Thunder G Shai Gilgeous-Alexander or the lack of established stars in the series. The fact of the matter is, for the first time in 11 years, this series did not have at least 1 team in HoopSocial's "NBA Team Market Size" Top-10, and the series suffered because of it.

The series also suffered from it's predictability and short series length. The Thunder were huge betting favorites and besides an out-of-the-blue Game 3 where the Timberwolves won by 42 points, the Thunder dominated them to a predictable and "boring" series. That unpredictable Timberwolves blowout also would lead to the most viewed game of the series in Game 4 "coincidentally."

2025 NBA Finals

So here we are, Thunder vs Pacers for the 2025 NBA Finals with Game 1 to take place in OKC on Thursday June 5th at 8:30pm EST. For a true fan of the sport the excitement for this series is plentiful. The newly-crowned MVP of the league who runs the best young core currently in the NBA will face off against the uncommonly liked underdogs with their own Guard who has been playing at an MVP-level throughout these playoffs.

They are also remarkably similar, with both teams captained by their Point Guard. Both teams' 2nd best player is their Power Forward, and both have a young Small Forward who could get hot and drop 30+ on you in any game.

The biggest kicker for the "True Fan" is also it's biggest downfall. When you definitely appeal to you're diehard fans you leave out excitement for your casual fans. The casual fan's interest in the NBA Finals to at least to take a peek at the Championship series is instrumental in the series' success. You can equate it to the NFL when Conference Championships generally average 45-60 Million viewers, with the Super Bowl bringing in 110-130 Million.

The normal jump in viewership from Conference Finals to NBA Finals in the last 5 years has ranged from 3.3 Million (in the 2020 "COVID season") to 5.5 Million in 2022, but is commonly seen around 4.5 Million. It is also good to point out that the largest jump in CC average views to Finals average views was in 2022 when the 7th highest market ranked Warriors made it through against the 11th market ranked Celtics, (by far the best matchup we've seen in terms of good markets.) The 2nd worst increase in 2023 was when the 15th market ranked Nuggets made it through to face the 17th market ranked Heat (the worst matchup we've seen in terms of good markets.) It's fair to say a matchup between the 22nd and 26th market-ranked teams could see a jump much lower than 2023's 4.013 million increase.

With an average viewership of 6.063 Million for both 2025 Conference Championships, (before Saturday's Game 6 statistics are out,) we can conclude an estimated average viewership of 9.5 to 11.1 Million viewers for the upcoming Finals.

As seen by the chart below, that could mean this would be the lowest-viewed NBA Finals series since 2006, besides 2020.

Conclusion

The NBA Finals viewership over the last 5 years has been up-and-down, but generally disappointing to broadcast partners due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2025 NBA Finals will almost certainly be a "down" year, where I have estimated an average viewership of 9.6 to 11.1 Million viewers per game.

The NBA will always attract more views for it's games when teams in "higher market areas" are playing. These 2025 NBA Playoffs started strong but have fallen tremendously because of higher-market teams not advancing.

The two teams that will play in the 2025 NBA Finals were among the 3 lowest ranked markets of any team to make the 2025 NBA Playoffs.

The NBA and ABC will be VERY UPSET about the matchup heading into June because of the loss of ad revenue compared to a say, a Lakers-Knicks series. The true NBA fans though... the ones that watched every game and saw Nesmith and Haliburton drag his team from 14-down and 2 minutes left to win... the ones that saw every soft foul that gave Shai 2 more free throws... the ones that actually cried when Tatum tore his achilles... They'll be ready for one hell of a series in the 2025 NBA Finals.

-All statistics on NBA viewership were gathered from SportsMediaWatch.com, ustvdb.com, and NBA.com.