Heat-Celtics scores for TNT, a Stanley Cup question mark, Monaco F1 sets a

In the exciting world of live sports television viewership analysis, it’s a truism that a clinching Game 7 broadcast will generate the best audience numbers.

That again proved true with the Jimmy Butler-led Miami Heat’s 103-84 victory at Boston on Monday night, which averaged a series-best 11.9 million viewers for TNT. Obviously, the narrative set things up: Eighth-seeded Miami shockingly went up 3-0 on the Celtics but then allowed them to tie the series before handling a fading Boston team on Monday night.

The Game 7 broadcast peaked at 14.2 million viewers, and it ended up as TNT’s third most-watched NBA game ever, the network said. It also was the fifth-best NBA game audience on cable, per Sports Media Watch, and seventh-largest non-finals viewership for the league on broadcast or cable since the current media deals began in 2002-03 (the biggest being 16 million on TNT for the Warriors’ Game 7 win over the Thunder in the 2016 Western Conference finals).

In other superlatives, it was also TNT’s most-watched Eastern Conference finals telecast, topping the 11.6 million for Heat-Pacers in 2013 (which did not include out-of-home viewership that Nielsen began tracking only in summer 2020).

Game 6 was pretty good, too: It averaged 8.7 million viewers on Saturday night to become the network’s most-watched Game 6 in 11 years, TNT said. The entire series averaged 7.4 million viewers, up 6 percent over 2022’s Heat-Celtics conference finals matchup, TNT said. It was the best ECF audience in a decade, and the network’s entire NBA playoff coverage averaged 4.7 million viewers per game, up 14 percent year over year and its best average best since 2018.

While Monday’s Game 7 wasn’t a thriller in terms of the final score, it perhaps sets up an NBA Finals viewership that won’t be as dire as some scuttlebutt suggests. Denver and two-time MVP Nikola Jokić are in their first finals, and Miami has its underdog storyline — and storylines help drive viewership, if properly conveyed by the network (ABC in this case) and the NBA.

We’ll know starting Thursday, when Game 1 tips off at 8:30 p.m., if the sporting public will tune in as they have, or have not, in the past. I outlined elsewhere the differences between Miami and Denver as teams and markets, so it’ll be curious to see if viewership is any sort of outlier.

ABC and the NBA will both be praying to the gods of capitalism atop Mount Nielsen that the finals goes seven games. The last NBA Finals to go the full seven was 2016 when 31 million watched Cleveland beat Golden State in the clincher, after being down 3-1, for the Cavs’ first title and the city’s first since 1964. In NBA history, there have been 19 Game 7s in the finals, but only 10 since 1970 and just four this century.

Last year’s six-game finals averaged 12.4 million viewers for Golden State’s latest championship, which was better than the 2020 and 2021 finals that were affected by the pandemic…