The NBA Finals could end tonight, but do people even care?

The 2024 NBA Finals may be the first Finals sweep since 2018 and just the third of this century.

Jun 15, 2024 - 06:30

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The NBA Finals could end tonight, but do people even care?

The 2024 NBA Finals have been uneventful.

The Boston Celtics hold a 3-0 lead in the series, and have led by at least 14 points in each of the three games. While the Mavericks have made it interesting for a few minutes in each of the last two games, the Celtics have always managed to weather the storm and are poised to end the series Friday night in a sweep.

If a sweep does happen, it would be the first Finals sweep since 2018.

The NBA would probably love an entertaining Finals, but it seems like a foregone conclusion that these Finals are over whether or not they end in a sweep, considering no team has ever come back from a 3-0 deficit in NBA history. (Ironically, the last team to come back from 3-0 to tie a series were the Celtics last year during the Eastern Conference Finals, though they would lose Game 7 in embarrassing fashion.)

The NBA is still in the midst of negotiations for its next media rights deal, though the dollar figure seems like it's already been set in a way that won't be affected by these Finals.

Still, viewership is still a key component for the state of the NBA, so the question is:

Will people watch tonight's Game 4 given that it may be a sweep?

The viewership for this series has been up and down. Game 1 averaged 10.99 million viewers, making it the least watched Game 1 since 2021. Game 2, which was on a Sunday, averaged a much better 12.31 million viewers, up 3% versus last year and was the most-watched Game 2 since 2019.

Game 3 had 11.43 million viewers, an increase of 2% versus last year but less than the 2022 Finals.

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Viewership for the NBA Finals, which has aired on ABC since 2003, has been down ever since the NBA bubble — as well as five-year Finals run of the Steph Curry-led Golden State Warriors, four of which came against LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. The league has still had viewership in the tens of millions since the two-year COVID-marred stretch in 2020 and 2021.

But this year's series could be a sweep — and that may affect the final number tonight.

The last sweep in 2018 was between the Warriors and the Cavaliers. While the whole series averaged 17.56 million viewers, the fourth and final game had a series-low 16.24 million viewers. The last game was also a blowout that saw the Warriors triumph by 23 points.

The next most recent sweep happened in 2007, notoriously one of the least-watched NBA Finals of all-time when the Tim Duncan-led San Antonio Spurs faced the Cleveland Cavaliers in what was James' first Finals appearance. The series averaged just 9.30 million viewers, the least-watched NBA Finals outside of the 2020 bubble.

The clinching fourth game of that series was actually the most-watched game, averaging 9.91 million viewers, helped by a close game that saw the Spurs win by just one point.

Based on the historical data, the success of tonight's game in terms of viewership will likely hinge on whether it remains close — regardless of the outcome. What is clear is that NBA Finals viewership is still at place where it can attract tens of millions of eyeballs, but it's far from where it was less than a decade ago when Curry and James were featured in the finale.

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