The New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs are not just playing a tight NBA Finals. They are drawing the biggest television audiences the league has seen in years.
Game 1 averaged 16.93 million viewers on ABC, according to Sportico, and peaked at 19.63 million in the 11 p.m. ET window. The Associated Press reported the opener was up 90 percent on last year's Finals Game 1 between Indiana and Oklahoma City, which drew 8.91 million. It was the most-watched Finals Game 1 since 2018, the LeBron James and Stephen Curry era, and the largest NBA audience since Game 6 of the 2019 Raptors-Warriors series, which pulled 18.59 million.
The number cleared a high bar outside basketball, too. AP noted the game topped 15 of the past 16 World Series openers and beat the 2024 World Series Game 1 between the Yankees and Dodgers, which drew 15.2 million.
Game 2 held up. ESPN said the broadcast averaged 16.43 million, ABC's most-watched Finals Game 2 since 2018, with TheWrap pegging it above 16 million. Across the first two games the series is averaging 16.68 million viewers, an 89 percent jump on 2025 and the best Finals figure in eight years, per numbers cited by Yahoo Sports from Front Office Sports.
The audience has translated into real money. Sportico reported ABC was charging roughly $800,000 for a 30-second spot in Game 2, with 42 advertisers committed and projected ad revenue of around $60 million for the night.
The surge did not come from nowhere. Sports Media Watch's Jon Lewis tracked NBA viewership climbing all spring: the first round averaged 3.84 million across ESPN/ABC, NBCUniversal and Amazon Prime Video, up 20 percent year over year and the highest first-round average since 1993. The New York Post called the Finals the best viewership marks of the decade.
Two forces are doing the heavy lifting. One is the New York market, without a title since 1973 and back on the sport's biggest stage. The other is Victor Wembanyama, the Spurs' 7-foot-4 phenom whose every possession has become appointment viewing. Add a 1999 Finals rematch and a series that has stayed close into the second week, and ABC has the kind of matchup the NBA had been hoping for.
The timing matters for the league. The 2026 postseason is the first under the NBA's new national media arrangement, which spread games across NBC, Amazon and Disney's ESPN and ABC. A Finals delivering audiences near 17 million hands every one of those partners an early return, and gives the league a selling point as it leans into the next decade of basketball.
