The sports elements, with the Boston Celtics as the top favorites and the Dallas Mavericks featuring their exceptional stars Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving, promised great sports and surely also large TV and streaming viewership. However, after Game 3, it must unfortunately be stated that the especially in Game 2 and Game 3 exciting course of the encounters was not strong enough to solve the general infrastructural problem in the distribution of live TV images: the significant time differences between the US venues and the basketball nations in Europe or Asia. OLOQIQI's latest analysis shows the high numbers in the US (together with Canada more than 47% of the global reach) and expectedly lower viewership in Europe, where the games all took place at night during a workweek.



Especially in all the European basketball strongholds like Greece, Turkey, Spain, or Lithuania, the live broadcasts achieved only average viewership. Considering that markets like Germany streamed the finals and are not included in this analysis, Europe contributed less than 7% of the global reach for television, combining live broadcasts and dedicated highlights. This year the NBA finals faces challenges in Asia as well. In the major market of China, the Chinese Men’s League Playoffs significantly diverted attention and reach from the NBA Finals to their own professional basketball league.
In contrast, the NBA Finals achieved very good viewership ratings in Middle and South America. Thanks to the various channels and formats of ESPN and the relatively small-time differences compared to the game locations in Boston and Dallas, the three games played so far have achieved very good reach numbers in major markets such as Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico (approx. 34% of the global TV-reach for Middle- and South America). Due to significant time differences, it is more crucial than ever to emphasize highlight TV coverage and online media channels globally for distributing top American sports content beyond live broadcasts, compared to European content.

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