The Super Bowl is to football as the NBA Finals are to basketball.
Having a team from a major city make the championship series can provide a huge boost in ratings, which is why TV executives are usually thrilled to see storied franchises from New York, Boston, Chicago and other large markets make the big game.
Although the NBA ratings have been trending downward since the retirement of Michael Jordan, the 2015 NBA Finals between the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers is the most watched series since 1998.
It averaged 19.94 million viewers on ABC, breaking the post-Jordan Finals record of an average of 18.9 million viewers that was garnered by the 2001 NBA Finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Philadelphia 76ers.
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Basketball has over 1 billion followers. Its a major sport in USA with NBA generating over $4.75 billion a year in revenue. It is fast becoming a big sport in Canada, China, Spain, Philippines, Australia, Turkey, France, Germany and some other minor European countries like Poland, etc.
For ranking any sport’s popularity, it is imperative that we set the criteria for ranking first. Check out these 25 world’s most popular sports from Totalsportek.com.