NBA Finals Viewing Down 6%, National TV Advertising At $112M

The 2023 NBA finals, in which the Denver Nuggets won their first NBA title ever over the Miami Heat, posted a Nielsen-measured average 11.5 million viewers over five games -- down 6% from a year ago.

Last year's NBA Finals, in which the Golden State Warriors beat the Boston Celtics in six games, averaged 12.3 million viewers.

This year’s finals pulled in $112.3 million in national TV advertising, according to EDO Ad EnGage estimates. Some 421 airings of commercials ran on the ABC Television Network, yielding a total of 4.7 billion impressions.

Universal Pictures and Sony Pictures top all TV advertisers with 19 commercial airings apiece -- Universal's ”Oppenheimer” and Sony’s “Gran Turismo.” Those two companies gathered the highest level of total impressions over the five games, at just over 205 million apiece.

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Using this big sports platform, Walt Disney ran 14 promo spots for a range of businesses including Hulu, FX, and theatrical movies “Elemental” and “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” State Farm had 16 commercial airings.

Automotive was also active -- Kia had 13 airings and Toyota had 12.

For the 2022 NBA Finals, the six games took in $148.5 million, with 408 commercial TV airings getting a total of 5.1 billion impressions.

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