{"id":270873,"date":"2026-06-18T14:40:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T14:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/270873\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T14:40:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T14:40:07","slug":"knicks-championship-parade-route-start-time-live-updates-how-to-watch-and-more-as-new-york-celebrates-first-nba-finals-win-since-1973","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/270873\/","title":{"rendered":"Knicks championship parade: Route, start time, live updates, how to watch and more as New York celebrates first NBA Finals win since 1973"},"content":{"rendered":"

The series finished as the most-watched NBA Finals<\/a> since Michael Jordan capped his “Last Dance” with the Chicago Bulls<\/a> in 1998, according to ESPN PR<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This year’s Finals averaged 20.6 million viewers, a 100% increase in viewership from last year’s championship series, which saw the Oklahoma City Thunder<\/a> outlast the Indiana Pacers<\/a> in seven games, per ESPN. For reference, as reported by Sports Media Watch<\/a>, Jordan’s Bulls defeating the Utah Jazz<\/a> in six games in ’98 drew an average of a whopping 29.04 million viewers. That year, of course, Jordan collected his sixth ring, cementing his case as the NBA’s GOAT.<\/p>\n

The 2026 NBA Finals set an ABC and ESPN audience record, according to ESPN, which cited Nielsen. It’s important to note that Nielsen shifted to a new methodology last fall<\/a> that couples its traditional panel with “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes. Plus, Nielsen didn’t begin factoring in out-of-home viewing in its estimates until 2020 and started doing so in 100% of markets only a year ago, according to Sports Media Watch.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the numbers this year’s Finals did<\/a> are still undoubtedly monumental.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The series finished as the most-watched NBA Finals since Michael Jordan capped his “Last Dance” with the Chicago…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270874,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[103053,4777,21,37011,97392,9,55452,1104,104465,56,63,65,64,9138,27941],"class_list":["post-270873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-championship-parade","tag-jalen-brunson","tag-nba","tag-nba-finals","tag-nba-finals-mvp","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city-hall","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-novel-experience","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-san-antonio-spurs","tag-ticker-tape-parade"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}