Game 7 of the NBA Finals drew an average audience of 16.353 million viewers on Sunday, according to preliminary data from Nielsen cited by ESPN.
The figure includes those who streamed the game on ESPN Plus, which simulcast the national feed of the game made available on ABC.
It was the highest-rated NBA Finals game since 2019, ESPN said in a press release on Monday. The game peaked with 19.281 million watching over a 15-minute window that started at 9:45 p.m. Eastern Time, ESPN said.
Overall, the seven-game event drew 10.3 million viewers, down from the 11.3 million fans who watched the Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks series last year.
Final Nielsen data is expected to be released on Tuesday. The Walt Disney Company occasionally factors in first-person data from streaming platforms like Hulu and Disney Plus to juice up finalized viewership data, as it did for its Oscars telecast earlier this year.
ESPN and ABC will offer rolling coverage of the NBA Draft for the 2025-26 season, starting on Wednesday.
