The 2026 NBA Finals continue to deliver historic television audiences, with Game 3 between the New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs attracting the league’s largest audience in nearly a decade.
Monday’s matchup, broadcast across ABC and ESPN, averaged 23.79 million viewers, making it the most-watched NBA game of any kind since Game 5 of the 2017 NBA Finals between the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers, which drew 24.53 million viewers.
The Spurs’ victory peaked at 26.3 million viewers during the 11:15 p.m. ET quarter-hour, ranking as the seventh-most watched NBA game since the end of the Michael Jordan era and the sixth-largest audience since ABC resumed NBA coverage in the 2002-03 season.
Much of the interest stemmed from the occasion itself. Game 3 marked the first NBA Finals game hosted by the Knicks in New York in 27 years, fueling anticipation well beyond the city and helping drive viewership to unprecedented levels.
The audience was also the largest for an NBA Finals Game 3 since the Chicago Bulls and Utah Jazz faced off in 1998. It comfortably surpassed the previous post-1998 high of 20.27 million viewers set by the Los Angeles Lakers and Philadelphia 76ers in 2001.
Compared to last year’s Game 3 between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers, which averaged just 9.19 million viewers, this year’s audience surged by an extraordinary 159 percent.
Beyond the NBA, the game stands as the most-watched basketball broadcast of any kind since the 2017 NBA Finals. It outperformed major events such as the men’s basketball gold medal game between the United States and France at the 2024 Paris Olympics and the 2024 NCAA Women’s National Championship.
Through three games, the Knicks-Spurs Finals are averaging 19.1 million viewers, the highest mark since the Warriors-Cavaliers Finals in 2017 and the second-highest NBA Finals average of the past 25 years.
Led by Victor Wembanyama and Jalen Brunson, the Spurs-Knicks showdown has become more than a championship series—it has emerged as one of the biggest television success stories in modern American sports, proving that a compelling matchup and a hungry New York market remain a powerful combination.