The New York Knicks' 105-95 win over the San Antonio Spurs in Game 1 of the NBA Finals drew 16.93 million viewers on Wednesday, giving ABC its biggest series opener audience since 2018 and the fifth-largest Finals opener in the network's 24 years with the rights.
That is the kind of number that turns an ordinary opening night into a ratings story. It was up 90 percent from last year's Game 1, which drew 8.91 million viewers, and it came as the league leaned on a matchup with real pull: the Knicks, from the country's largest media market, against a Spurs team that has already been a postseason draw, a pairing that helped send searches for nba score surging by the time the final horn sounded in San Antonio.
Victor Wembanyama's Western Conference finals clincher against the Oklahoma City Thunder had drawn 15.9 million viewers on NBC and Peacock, a sign that the Spurs were already carrying rare television weight before the Finals even began. Game 1 went further. The four larger NBA Finals opener audiences in ABC's 24-year run all came during the Golden State Warriors-Cleveland Cavaliers run from 2015 to 2018, which leaves this year's opener outside the dynasty era and still ahead of every other series start the network has carried.
Nielsen's changes this season, including a big data component and more out-of-home measurement, have generally lifted live-sports totals across the board. But the Finals openers in both the NHL and NBA rose by more than those modest technical gains can explain. That leaves the matchup itself as the stronger force behind Wednesday's audience spike, even if the exact split between methodology and interest is not broken out.
said the opening games of both the NHL Stanley Cup Finals on Tuesday and the NBA Finals on Wednesday were the best this decade for the first game of either series. For the Knicks and Spurs, that means Game 1 was not just a win-loss result in San Antonio. It became the benchmark by which this Finals run will be measured, and Game 2 will now answer whether the audience holds or whether Wednesday was the first-night peak.
