ABC has aced the first test of its finals week.
The network saw big audiences for the opening games of both the NHL Stanley Cup Finals on Tuesday and the NBA Finals on Wednesday. Both telecasts were the best this decade for the first game of either series.
Starting with the larger audience: Game 1 of the NBA Finals between the New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs averaged 16.93 million viewers, the best for the series opener since 2018. Wednesday’s game grew by 90 percent from the last year’s game 1 (8.91 million). The Knicks’ 105-95 win in San Antonio drew the fifth largest audience for the NBA Finals opener in the 24 years ABC has had rights to the series, behind the four straight matchups between the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers from 2015-18.
Having a team from the country’s largest media market in the Knicks certainly helped ABC. The Spurs, led by rising superstar Victor Wembanyama, have also been a big draw during the postseason: Their Western Conference finals clincher against the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder drew 15.9 million viewers on NBC and Peacock.
On Tuesday, game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals delivered 4.78 million viewers who watched the Las Vegas Golden Knights beat the Carolina Hurricanes, 5-4. The game was up by 54 percent from ABC’s last Stanley Cup opener in 2024 (3.11 million) and nearly doubled the 2.42 million who watched last year’s first game on TNT and TruTV.
The Golden Knights’ win was the largest audience for game 1 of the Cup finals since the 2019 series between the Boston Bruins and St. Louis Blues, which drew 5.25 million viewers. It was also the largest Stanley Cup Finals series opener ever on ESPN/ABC, including when it had rights in 1994 and 2000-04.
In both the NBA and NHL, the rise in ratings for the first games of the finals continues a pattern from earlier playoff rounds. Both leagues saw bigger audiences for the postseason this year across their various media partners.
Nielsen has made changes to its methodology this season, including adding a big data component and collecting more out-of-home data, that has generally resulted in larger numbers for live sports. But the gains for the NBA and NHL finals openers far outstrip the marginal gains from those changes.