Squish them together into one sprawling 12,338 square-mile mass, and the 77 counties that make up the blended Indianapolis and Oklahoma City markets would yield a grand total of 1.99 million TV homes, or 1.6% of the national base. Given the relatively undersized reach of this hypothetical conjoined entity—by way of comparison, the top-ranked New York City market crams 7.49 million TV households into an area that’s one-third the size of our Indy-OKC hybrid—it’s not unreasonable to suggest that the TV audience for the 2025 NBA Finals is likely to be one of the smallest on record.
Naturally, NBA commissioner Adam Silver has done what he can to downplay the Designated Market Area chatter, arguing that the participation of clubs repping smaller media markets is very much by design. “I’m happy whatever team ends up in the Finals,” Silver said Wednesday during an appearance on FS1’s Breakfast Ball. “It’s been intentional, from our standpoint, to create a system, a collective bargaining agreement, that allows more teams to compete.”
As far as the league’s media partners are concerned, Silver’s system seems to be working. Through the conference finals, Disney and TNT Sports have generated $344.8 million in sales revenue, per EDO Ad EnGage estimates, flat versus the analogous period in 2024. Overall in-game deliveries are up 3.3% year-over-year, with an average draw of 4.49 million viewers per window.
While Silver insisted that real hoops fans will tune in to the Pacers-Thunders series regardless of demography, he acknowledged there may be some slippage among more casual observers on either coast. “We’re going to have to go through a process … where people are accustomed to tuning into the Finals because the two teams deserve to be there, and [because] it’s the best basketball,” Silver said before noting that the Super Bowl matchup has almost no material impact on the Big Game’s deliveries.
(Fair point, although invoking the NFL in a conversation about audience size is sort of like comparing a Sumerian deity to the guy who sold you your life insurance policy.)
If the NBA’s Final Boss is justifiably vexed about how seemingly secondary concerns tend to dictate the size of the league’s audiences, ABC’s advertisers aren’t nearly as bothered by the DMA issue. According to Jim Minnich, who serves as senior VP, revenue and yield management at Disney’s ad sales team, only a “couple of avails” remain in Games 1-4 of the Finals, while “a handful” of Game 5 units are still up for grabs. Speaking on the eve of the Pacers-Thunder opener, Minnich said the Finals sell-through is at 80%, with scatter demand coming in hot on the heels of a 7% year-over-year ratings boost for the 27 playoff games on ESPN and ABC.
All told, 85 advertisers have staked out territory in the Finals, a roster that includes 17 first-time buyers. Of the returning clients, 62% have increased their spend compared to last year’s Mavericks-Celtics series.
“We’re very well sold coming into this,” Minnich said during a Wednesday afternoon video call. “We’re seeing double-digit scatter price increases over [the 2024-25] upfront, and we’re seeing double-digit scatter volume growth. There’s been high demand across the board.”
As marketers increasingly look to the NBA Finals as a vehicle for fresh creative, a host of in-game integrations will be deployed as a means to shake up the break structure. Among the brands that will be rolling out custom integrations include Google, Domino’s, Ford, Coors Light and Burger King, the latter of which is bowing a new musical highlight package during Sunday’s broadcast of Game 2.
Many of these integrations will riff on the myriad ways in which the NBA overlaps with American pop culture, a theme that served as a throughline during the paparazzi fever dream that was the Eastern Conference Finals on TNT Sports.
“Looking back at the Knicks-Pacers series, there was so much conversation swirling around Celebrity Row,” Minnich said. “Advertisers, especially those looking to reach younger, more affluent viewers, recognized this and wanted to get involved in the conversation.” While Timothée Chalamet reinvented himself as the Taylor Swift of Madison Square Garden, marketers that aren’t necessarily endemic to in-game NBA buys began scooping up units in a bid to insert themselves in the national chit chat around the actor and his equally fired-up celebrity pals.
As it happens, the Hell’s Kitchen native effectively has helped Minnich’s crew shift units ever since he popped up on ESPN’s College GameDay to flex his football cred and promote the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown. (Chalamet was an easy get, as Disney’s Searchlight Pictures produced the film.) “That GameDay appearance was a great example of how pop culture and sports intersect, while underscoring all the different entry points that exist across our platforms,” Minnich said. “Moments like that are why more advertisers seem to be coming around to the idea that sports is for everyone.”
Of course, outside of Pat McAfee and maybe Lon Chaney Jr.’s ghost, you’re probably not going to see a whole lot of famous Hoosiers/Sooners taking in the action from the pricey seats at Gainbridge Field House and Paycom Center. But the NBA’s core audience of upscale consumers will have plenty of star power to feast on nonetheless, as this year’s Finals features the youngest cast of players in nearly half a century.
“We are ecstatic to see two new teams in the Finals,” Minnich said. “I wouldn’t even call them up and comers, because Shai [Gilgeous-Alexander] is the MVP and Halliburton may have just made himself a household name after that show he put on against the Knicks.” As the NBA embraces the end of the superteam era and legends like LeBron James and Steph Curry near quitting time, this new crop of stars will be tasked with the not-inconsiderable task of growing the game from markets that lie far from the bright lights of New York, L.A. and Chicago.
“I don’t necessarily think it’s just about the big markets anymore,” Minnich said. “There’s a lot to be said for the sheer number of stars in the league and the new competitive environment.” (Second-apron parity promises to continue to keep things fresh at the top; no NBA team has won back-to-back titles since Golden State in 2017 and 2018.)
Ultimately, Minnich is projecting a longer series for the Finals (“this is not going to be, you know, four-none”), and while he isn’t making any predictions as to which team will walk away with Larry O’Brien’s gold-plated hardware, he’s not counting out the prospect of a Game 7.
“I think the Pacers have the depth to compete,” Minnich said. “All they have to do is pick one off in OKC and one at home and we have an even series.”
Should the Finals grind on for the full seven, the subsequent deliveries will largely offset any unspectacular early TV numbers. In this century, only four series have required a seventh frame, with the average audiences ranging from 19 million for the Spurs-Pistons decider in 2005 to 31 million for the second Cavaliers-Warriors series in 2016. ABC will have to get there without the built-in boost of the NYC DMA, but outside the megalopolis lift, nothing guarantees a crowd quite like duration.
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