The NFL is eating the NBA’s lunch right now, and it seems to be enjoying it. After a record-breaking amount of 127.7 million viewers tuned in to see the Philadelphia Eagles thrash the Kansas City Chiefs at Super Bowl LIX, making it the most watched event of its kind, the NBA has responded with one of the least captivating Finals series in recent years.
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Despite the buzzer-beating heroics of the Indiana Pacers and Tyrese Haliburton, Game 2 of the NBA Finals only managed to net an average of 8.76 million viewers, making it one of the least watched games of the NBA Finals since the turn of the century.
Excluding the league’s bubble tournament in 2020, Sunday night’s contest was the least-watched Game 2 since 2007. At its current rate, even if the series manages to reach Game 7, it’s unlikely that the combined viewership from those contests would be enough to surpass the Super Bowl.
Heading into the Finals, the NBA’s viewership numbers for the playoffs were actually up by 3%. Nevertheless, it seems as if there’s little interest in their championship matchup. Per Front Office Sports, “the 8.84 million viewership average of the first two games is down at least 24% from the last three Finals.”
Of course, the league’s commissioner, Adam Silver, is refusing to falter in the face of these numbers, insisting that the passion for the NBA is “felt globally.” While he continues to tow the company live, however, the rest of us are forced to accept the fact that the internationally recognized game of basketball is steadily losing out to its domestic counterpart in gridiron football in terms of financial growth.
By partnering with Netflix and featuring a pair of regular season contests on Christmas Day in 2024, the NFL essentially started a hostile takeover of the NBA’s recent tradition of being the only major league to broadcast games on Christmas Day. Even though they stand as the two most premiere sporting leagues in the nation, it’s become rather clear as to which one American’s would rather watch.
Ironically enough, both leagues managed to lose viewers this year, yet their reactions to those declines were very different. Where a 2.2% drop in viewership seemed to be a mute point for the NFL and its fans, a 2% drop for the NBA resulted in online scrutiny from fans and routine questioning of the aforementioned Silver.
Seeing as the NFL is now beginning to spread its international influence, the league has scheduled 13 international, regular-season games to be played across five different nations throughout the 2025 season, it seems inevitable that the two sporting giants will be directly competing for viewers in the near future.
Then again, this postseason was one the most successful for the NBA in recent years. Their numbers didn’t drop until the Finals matchup was solidified.
Seeing as Indiana and Oklahoma City are two of the smallest markets in the entire league, perhaps the viewership totals aren’t as alarming as they appear to be at a first glance. Either way, however, one thing has become abundantly clear, and that is the fact that it’s going to take a lot more than Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the “Haliban” to terrorize the brand of the NFL.
