Sunday night’s NBA Finals Game 7—in which the Cleveland Cavaliers defeated the Golden State Warriors—was the most-watched NBA game since Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals, according to Fast Nationals from Nielsen. The telecast drew a massive average audience of 30,799,000 viewers (p2+) and generated a 15.7 U.S. household rating.
The most-watched NBA Finals since 1998, the series averaged 20,166,000 viewers and 11.3 U.S. rating for its seven games. The back-to-back Cavaliers-Warriors NBA Finals in 2015 and 2016 are the two most-watched and highest-rated NBA Finals ever on ABC. The NBA Finals on ABC won the night across all of television for the 55th consecutive time.
Additionally, Sunday night’s championship game became the most-watched NBA game ever on WatchESPN across all metrics, generating 96,276,000 total minutes streamed, 1,760,000 unique viewers and an average minute audience of 598,000 viewers—the most for a non-World Cup event ever on Watch ESPN.