Recreation 1 of the NBA Finals between the Golden State Warriors and Boston Celtics averaged a 6.4 score with 11.9 million viewers throughout ABC and ESPN2.
There’s dispute as as to if that quantity represents a preliminary or ultimate. Preliminary figures don’t embody out-of-home viewing, which might result in a rise in numbers.
The present Recreation 1 numbers tops solely the earlier two years for the bottom rankings in a sequence opener since 2007.
The rankings do characterize a 42% enhance from Recreation 1 of final 12 months. The quantity additionally represents the second highest score for a sport for the reason that league returned from its pandemic-related hiatus two years in the past, behind final 12 months’s Recreation 6.
Previous to 2019, 29 straight Finals video games averaged a minimum of a 9.0 score, with 56 straight video games averaging above 14 million viewers.
