Can Small-Market NBA Finals Teams Punch Above Their Weight in the Ratings?

In the world of TV markets and sports ratings, the expression “Bigger is better” usually applies. Yet after a pretty thrilling round of playoffs, the NBA Finals — a showdown between teams representing two of the smallest cities in the league — will put that assumption to the test.

Tipping off Thursday, the Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder both bring young superstars to the party, including recently anointed league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. But they also hail from Indianapolis and Oklahoma City, which rank No. 25 and 47, respectively, out of the more than 200 individually measured designated market areas (or DMAs) in the U.S., placing them among the bottom seven of the NBA’s 30 teams. (Top-ranked New York, whose Knicks were just bounced from the playoffs, boasts a pair of franchises, as does No. 2 market Los Angeles.)

Historically, major sporting events benefit from having larger-market teams squaring off, cashing in on the rooting interest in the home cities to boost tune-in.
Among the most recent examples, last year’s World Series, pitting the New York Yankees against the L.A. Dodgers, delivered an average 15.8 million viewers, per Nielsen, Major League Baseball’s most-watched Fall Classic since 2017, despite running only five games.

That marked a 67% increase over 2023, the lowest-rated World Series ever, in which the Texas Rangers (considered part of the No. 4 Dallas-Fort Worth DMA) defeated the Arizona Diamondbacks (a.k.a. Phoenix, No. 12).

Last year’s NBA Finals, with the Boston Celtics edging the Dallas Mavericks, averaged 11.3 million viewers on ABC/ESPN, the league’s worst performance since 2021. After a slow start, though, the NBA rebounded thanks to a slew of midseason trades, finishing just below overall regular-season results for the previous year.

So are there any potential rays of hope for this year’s matchup? Maybe.
The one equalizer for any sports championship determined by a series (in the NBA and MLB’s cases, a best-of-seven format) is for the contests to be competitive, with the series coming down to a Game 7 to determine the winner.

Heading into the Finals, the playoffs have also put up solid results, up 3% overall, although that comes with a disclaimer: The Eastern Conference finals, featuring the Knicks, were up 10%, while the Western Conference (Oklahoma City vs. Minnesota) declined.

Beyond the NBA and its TV partners (a roster that will shift, incidentally, with NBC taking a major package of games next season), several other entertainment players have a vested interest in the series, given that the NBA playoffs provide a platform to reach male viewers, especially, promoting blockbusters like “Fantastic Four: First Steps” and “Superman” heading into the summer movie season.

Obviously, the interested parties can’t make the host cities any bigger, but they can root for the series to be longer — and decided in the closing moments — in a way that might help a size-challenged Finals, to borrow from another sport, punch above its weight.

“Sirens” picks up steam while “Adolescence” soars

Netflix’s campy five-episode series “Sirens” maintained its spot as Netflix’s most-watched English-language show of the week with 18.2 million views during the week of May 26, up 9% from the 16.7 million it logged in its first four days on the platform last week.

Meanwhile, buzzy U.K. crime series “Adolescence,” which first debuted in March, finally surpassed “Stranger Things 4” on Netflix’s all-time most-popular TV English-language list, with “Adolescence” standing in the No. 2 spot with 141.2 million views to date — behind just “Wednesday” — while “Stranger Things 4” ranks third with 140.7 million views. It’s worth noting that viewers for “Stranger Things 4” are likely to surge again ahead of the new season of “Stranger Things” releasing this fall, as could views for “Adolescence” given its potential Emmys buzz.

AMAs ratings grow in delayed viewing

The 2025 American Music Awards tacked on a considerable amount of delayed viewers to its original May 26 telecast, growing to reach over 10 million unique viewers across its CBS premiere, as well as encores on MTV, CMT and BET. 

After bringing in an initial live-plus-same-day viewership of 4.86 million, the Jennifer Lopez-hosted awards scored 5.2 million viewers after seven days of viewing, ranking as the show’s biggest audience since 2019 and a 38% uptick from its last live telecast in 2022.

“La Casa de los Famosos All-Stars” finale boosts Telemundo

Monday’s finale of “La Casa de los Famosos All-Stars” boosted Telemundo to rank as the most-watched primetime broadcast network, regardless of language, in the key demo among adults 18-49 as the network scored 559,000 viewers in that age bracket, according to Nielsen. The news comes as Telemundo celebrates its 14th consecutive week as the No. 1 most-watched Spanish-language broadcast network in weekday primetime among total viewers, as well as its third consecutive week winning the 18-49 demo.

The post Can Small-Market NBA Finals Teams Punch Above Their Weight in the Ratings? appeared first on TheWrap.