So we’re shaping up for the ’25 NBA Finals.

A young and hungry Thunder vs. hot Pacers squad are going to duke it out to be league champs.

Meme culture would say it’s a free throw merchant/aura led Thunder vs. the Haliban led Pacers.

This match-up is going to be GREAT for basketball purists.

The arguably (and statistically) #1 defensive team in the league against one of the best offenses in the league since the playoffs started.

A lot evenly distributed scoring and a fast paced matchup = a lot of team (read: fundamental and efficient) basketball. This will be a great match up for kids to watch who are learning the game and how “play the right way”👴🏽.

But this is a problem for the league’s popularity and pockets?

It’s going to be great evenly distributed team basketball…who are also two small market teams.

Great basketball, bad for ratings (but not really.)

Ratings wise here’s the summary: the Oklahoma City and Indianapolis combined have 1.9M TV households, while New York alone has 7.6M (because eyeballs watching the games + ads = $$$).

So there will be fewer viewers watching this finals match up than if there was a Thunder vs Knicks match up? Yes.

Does this affect the NBA’s money? Not really.

The NBA’s TV deal is locked in with ESPN and ABC for the next 11 years at a whopping $76 billion (yes, with a “B”). Which means that the NBA gets this money from these platforms regardless of the finals match up .

It could be a Charlotte vs Sacramento match-up and it wouldn’t matter—the money is locked in.

The main thing that will be affected is how much businesses are willing to pay to advertise during the finals because the price for these ads spots are floating and not locked in. For reference, the average cost of a 30 second commercial in the 2018 NBA finals was 700k, so we’ll see how much this number changes this year.

So yes, there might be less people watching the Finals but the NBA’s money is relatively OK.

To me it’s a win overall. A multi billion dollar company takes a small hit in revenue and the fans get to watch good basketball, how it’s supposed to be played 👴🏽.