This year’s NBA Finals is creating a large audience for Bristol sports programmer ESPN and its fellow Walt Disney Co. subsidiary, ABC.
Sunday night’s Game 2 of the NBA Finals generated a strong 10.2 overnight rating on ABC, tied for the four-highest Game 2 rating since 2004, according to an ESPN report. The broadcast marked the 32nd consecutive time an NBA Finals game has won the night for all of television.
On top of ABC’s coverage, ESPN is carrying the game on ancillary Finals coverage on many of its multimedia platforms, with the simulcast on ESPN3 obtaining an average minute audience of 51,300. NBA content on ESPN.com also rose 17 percent from last year’s Game 2.
ABC, which aired the game Sunday night, and ESPN are divisions of The Walt Disney Co. ESPN and ABC’s television deal with the NBA runs through the 2015-2016 season.
