In a season full of troubling television ratings, the NBA Finals have hit rock bottom.
According to Jon Paulson of Sports Media Watch, the Miami Heat’s win over the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 3 on ABC averaged a measly 3.1 rating and 5.94 million viewers, making it the least-watched Finals game in broadcast history.
“Nobody anticipated good ratings for a fanless, football season NBA Finals, but this year’s series is thus far underperforming the lowest expectations,” Paulson wrote.
The previous low for a Finals game took place in 2003, when Game 2 between the San Antonio Spurs and then-New Jersey Nets recorded an average rating of 5.2 and 8.06 million viewers.
So to recap, Game 3 of this season brought in almost three million viewers less than the previous least-watched Finals game.
As Paulson noted, this year’s Finals do indeed come with the caveat of being played in October, pitting it head-to-head with the television beast that is the NFL. In fact, Game 3 went head-to-head with NBC’s Sunday Night Football, which won the night.
Baseball is also in the middle of its own playoffs.
Mostly, television viewership is down across the board — despite the fact more people are spending time at home while in the throes of a global pandemic.
But no matter how you spin it, the NBA is having a TV season to forget. The first three games, in fact, make up the three least-watched Finals games in history. But at least the first two averaged at least 6.6 million viewers.
Those numbers are still bad. But Game 3 was a whole lot worse.
Game 6 in 1998 between the Chicago Bulls and Utah Jazz was the most-watched Finals game ever, averaging 35.89 million viewers — or about 32 million more than the Lakers-Heat in Game 3.
