Congratulations go out to the Golden State Warriors for their huge Game 7 Western Conference Finals win last night — and to TNT for landing perhaps even bigger TV ratings.
Nielsen has reported that Monday’s matchup nabbed a massive 15.9 million total viewers, on average. Not only is that large enough to be the biggest NBA game in cable history, it’s also TNT’s top telecast ever.
The Bay Area team’s comeback victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder on Memorial Day set a new cable record for highest-rated NBA game of all time, hauling in an 11.2 household overnight rating, which is based on the 56 metered markets monitored by Nielsen.
The contest peaked between 11:15 and 11:30 p.m. ET, with a massive 13.8. Locally,
The tiebreaker also proved quite a boon for TNT studio show “Inside the NBA,” which hit a series-high 4.8 rating on Monday evening. Fast national numbers for Game 7 should be out shortly.
Starting Thursday, ABC will reap the viewership benefits of a Cleveland Cavaliers-Warriors NBA Finals rematch — and, boy, can the Disney broadcaster use a long and competitive series.
Last year, it was Steph Curry (pictured above) and Golden State that eventually took home the trophy. LeBron James & Co. are out to make sure that doesn’t happen again.