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More People In The U.S. Watched The Euro 2020 Finals Than The NBA Finals

While the NBA has had problems with its TV ratings for a while now, it got worse at an alarmingly bad rate in recent years.

This years numbers are thankfully way up from last year’s bubble disappointment, but they’re still nowhere near where the league wants them to be.

2019’s Finals between the Golden State Warriors and Toronto Raptors averaged 15.1 million viewers. Last year’s NBA Finals only averaged 7.5 million viewers over the six games, a 51% decline. Now, this year the views have improved again to an average around the 9 million mark.

Game 4 even averaged 10.25 million, the biggest number in NBA basketball since 2019.

But to have a comparison for these numbers, one may be surprised to find out that more people in America watched the Euro 2020 Finals between Italy and England than the first three games of the NBA Finals.

While the stat can also be seen as a testament to soccer’s growing popularity in the United States, it certainly also has to be seen as a knock on the NBA.

An average of 9.4 million people in the United States watched the European final.

That outperforms the ongoing NBA Finals, which is averaging 8.9 million.

That’s insane.

— MLS Buzz (@MLS_Buzz) July 13, 2021