SAN ANTONIO (AP) \u2014 The star power of Victor Wembanyama and Jalen Brunson helped this year’s NBA Finals get off to a huge start in terms of viewership, the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the last finals matchup between LeBron James and Stephen Curry eight years ago.<\/p>\n
Game 1 of the finals matchup between the San Antonio Spurs and New York Knicks averaged nearly 17 million viewers on Wednesday night, up 90% when compared to last season’s finals Game 1. It was the most-watched Game 1 since 2018, the most recent time James \u2014 then of Cleveland \u2014 and Golden State’s Curry faced off in the title round.<\/p>\n
Wednesday’s game had a peak audience of 19.63 million viewers around 11 p.m. EDT, which would have been in the fourth quarter of New York’s 105-95 victory.<\/p>\n
It was the most-watched finals Game 1 ever on ABC and the most-watched finals contest since Game 6 of the 2019 title series between Toronto and Golden State.<\/p>\n
The viewership numbers for Game 1 on Wednesday were higher than the opening game of 15 of the past 16 World Series, including the 2024 series opener between the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers \u2014 a matchup pitting the country’s top two media markets. That game averaged 15.2 million viewers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO (AP) \u2014 The star power of Victor Wembanyama and Jalen Brunson helped this year’s NBA Finals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1689,31021,23008,116127,23681,59373,202,85963,85962,59370,59371,196,91639,91638,198,199,942,82,84,83,27596,509],"class_list":["post-324701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-cleveland","tag-jalen-brunson","tag-lebron-james","tag-nba-finals-spurs-knicks-ratings","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100373-mc-complete-state-national","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-product-30083-ap-new-york-city-news-no-weather","tag-product-30085-ap-new-york-state-news-no-weather","tag-product-30109-ap-texas-state-news-no-weather","tag-product-30598-ap-national-news-report-a-wire","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-31388-premium-entertainment","tag-product-33328-ap-premium-entertainment-other","tag-product-40802-ap-new-york-city-sports-only","tag-product-40803-ap-new-york-state-sports-only","tag-product-40815-ap-texas-sports-only","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-stephen-curry","tag-victor-wembanyama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}