Game Five Audience Up, Peaks with 22.4 Million Viewers
The 2014 NBA Finals on ABC, in which the San Antonio Spurs defeated the Miami Heat in five games, averaged 15,524,000 viewers (p2+) and a 9.3 U.S. household rating, according to Nielsen. This is up from 15,120,000 viewers and a 9.1 rating, respectively, through the first five games of last year’s Spurs-Heat series.
Game Five of the NBA Finals generated 17,881,000 viewers, up 10 percent from 16,267,000 viewers last year. Viewership peaked with 22,400,000 viewers in the last half hour. Additionally, Game Five delivered a 10.3 rating, up eight percent from a 9.5 rating last year.
Each of the five NBA Finals games helped propel ABC to win the night across television in ratings and viewership, culminating with Game Five, which more than doubled its competition.
On ESPN3, the NBA Finals averaged 374,000 unique viewers, which is up 53 percent from 244,000 unique viewers for the first five games of the 2013 NBA Finals.
Game Five of the NBA Finals on Twitter was the most-tweeted NBA game of the year with more than 6.4 million tweets, more than triple when compared to Game Five last season. Overall, the 2014 NBA Finals received 16.6 million total tweets, with each game the most-talked about television program of the day on Twitter. The games accounted for 61 percent of all television conversation on Twitter on days they aired on ABC, according to Nielsen Social.
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Media contact: Ben Cafardo at 860-766-3496 or [email protected] (@Ben_ESPN).
