For the first time in nearly a decade, the NBA Finals will go the distance, as the Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder get set to square off Sunday night in Game 7 of a series that has defied all expectations.
“One game. This is what it’s all about,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle told reporters Thursday night after his team trounced OKC 108-91 to extend the NBA season by one last night. “This is what you dream about growing up, this kind of opportunity.”
If the Pacers are psyched to have forced a seventh game, the bonus ABC broadcast is also a dream come true for Rita Ferro. Thanks to Indiana’s refusal to back down in the face of a 3-2 deficit, the president of Disney’s advertising sales unit will max out the company’s ROI, as overall in-game revenue for the Finals should approach the $300 million mark.
As old-school sales execs are wont to say, if Game 6 is when you start to make a profit, Game 7 is all gravy. And while ABC’s windfall may be somewhat reduced by the necessity of doling out the inevitable make-goods that are a function of a battle between two small-market teams, Ferro’s team has ample cause for celebration.
Through the fifth game of the Pacers-Thunder epic, ABC averaged 9.16 million viewers per night, and while the TV turnout has dwarfed everything else on the spring schedule, the deliveries are among the lowest in the modern Nielsen era. Game 5 managed a series-high 9.54 million viewers, but that marked a 22% decline versus last season’s analogous Mavericks-Celtics capper, which scared up 12.2 million viewers.
While ABC has been hampered by the small–town matchup—the Indianapolis and OKC markets are home to a combined 1.99 million TV households, accounting for just 1.6% of the national base—the necessity of a seventh game will go a long way toward moving the ratings needle. Per Nielsen, the spike in deliveries between Game 6 and Game 7 is vertiginous, with an average boost of 43.7%, or from 18.2 million to 26.1 million.
Those figures were derived from the four NBA Finals that have gone the distance since the 21st century got underway; on a percentile basis, the greatest lift was recorded during the 2010 Celtics-Lakers series (+57%). In terms of the absolute number of viewers that were added between a sixth and seventh broadcast, the 2016 Cavaliers-Warriors classic beat all comers with a net gain of 10.3 million viewers.
Since ABC is working from a much smaller base this year—Game 6 of that spellbinding Cleveland-Golden State series drew 20.7 million viewers, while the audience for the deciding game leapt all the way to 31 million—barring a blowout, the network can still expect to serve up around 15.5 million viewers with tonight’s broadcast. While that’s a far cry from the usual crowd that settles in for a Game 7, the NBA is almost certain to post its strongest in-game delivery since 2019.
However the TV numbers shake out, the NBA is guaranteed to crown its seventh new champion in as many years, a streak that serves as a testament to the state of parity under commissioner Adam Silver. A Pacers win would mark the franchise’s very first NBA title since it joined the league in 1976—Indiana earned ABA championships in 1970, 1972 and 1973—while Thunder precursors the Seattle SuperSonics hoisted the hardware in 1979.
Game 7 tips off at 8 p.m. ET on ABC. OKC opened as 8.5-point homecourt favorites.
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