Market size isn’t the NBA Finals’ problem

The NBA Finals resume tonight with a home game for the Indiana Pacers, tied 1-1 with the Oklahoma City Thunder. Sports business reporter Randall Williams has been listening to all the talk around this small-market championship series and thinks a lot of it is misplaced. Plus: Tariffs create an opening for Canadian warehouses, and more students from Africa are applying for MBAs in the US.

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The NBA Finals are easily the most glamorous, star-studded sporting event of the early summer. Yet this year the lights don't appear to be as bright. A lot of folks are gossiping about why, but let's get to the facts and dispel some fiction.

This year's contest features the Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers. The Thunder had one of the most dominant regular seasons in NBA history, with an average margin of victory of 12.87 points, the highest ever. The Pacers have had an electric postseason, pulling off several miraculous comebacks—Tyrese Haliburton hit his fourth game-winning shot in the Finals' opener. Additionally, the Thunder have a superstar in league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and an incredible defense. The Pacers' fast-paced style of basketball should be appealing to casual watchers.

And yet, Game 1 of the series saw 8.91 million viewers tune in, making it the least-watched Game 1 since 1988 (excluding the Covid-19 seasons of 2020 and 2021). The numbers were worse for Game 2, with 8.76 million viewers, according to Sports Media Watch. So what exactly is the issue, and is there an issue at all?

Plenty of fans in the stands at Paycom Center in Oklahoma City for Game 2 of the NBA Finals. Photographer: Ron Hoskins/NBAE/Getty Images

Some sports fans will point to the fact that two small-market teams are playing. Indianapolis and Oklahoma City rank 21st and 25th, respectively, in terms of the NBA's largest media markets. In other words, the matchup isn't sexy. To that I say, "Who cares?" After the Milwaukee Bucks won the 2021 Finals, viewership for their games increased 21% the next season, according to the NBA. Two years later when the Denver Nuggets won the championship, their viewership increased 32%. No matter the market size, people love winners.

At the same time, though, big name sports commentators and analysts aren't helping to sell the matchup either. "This series feels like that Saturday Night Live when the celebrity host doesn't have a lot of star power and you're kind of wishing Tom Hanks would host it," said Colin Cowherd, host of Fox Sports' The Herd With Colin Cowherd. "It's not going to be a series we talk about much in between games."

Comments like these have plagued the NBA throughout the 2024-25 season. At the outset, the league was up against 2024 presidential election coverage, the MLB playoffs and the middle of the NFL season, but its overall viewership decline was only 2%. When the playoffs rolled around, viewership was up 12% during the conference semifinals and ratings weren't talked about as much.

I find the constant conversation about viewership weird. I cover a bunch of pro sports leagues, and in no other sport have I seen fans and media pundits alike zero in on the business of a league like they're doing to the NBA right now. So before Game 1, I asked NBA Commissioner Adam Silver about it.

"Even for me sort of walking on the street, fans coming up to me, it frustrates me that the first thing they say is, 'How are the ratings? What are the ratings going to be?' As opposed to, 'Wow, you have two incredible conference finals, what a great playoff series you've had.' I think it seeps into our coverage, quite honestly," Silver said.

The reality is, the NBA isn't in trouble, but it is having growing pains. Yes, growing pains in year 79. Superstars such as Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, LeBron James and Kawhi Leonard have been the biggest draw for viewers over the past 15 seasons. But their careers are winding down, meaning it's time for new, young stars to fill their shoes.

In the previous Finals, the trio of Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum and Luka Dončić failed to deliver signature captivating performances. The Boston Celtics won in five games over the Dallas Mavericks. The year before, the Denver Nuggets' three-time MVP Nikola Jokić, played great, but he treats basketball like a nine-to-five. So far, Shai is balling, but if the NBA and its media partners don't promote him like he's the next big thing, viewers won't believe it either.

The last thing I'll say is the NBA signed an 11-year, $76 billion media deal with Disney/ESPN, Comcast/NBC/Peacock and Amazon that hasn't even kicked in yet. That money is fully guaranteed until the end of the 2035-36 season, no matter if the Los Angeles Lakers or the Charlotte Hornets (don't laugh!) are the ultimate champion. So while people continue to throw shade, the NBA's business is shining. People talk, money shouts.

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In Brief

Underlying US inflation rose in May by less than forecast for the fourth month in a row, suggesting companies are largely holding back on passing on higher tariff costs to consumers.
Protests over immigration raids stretched into a fifth night in Los Angeles and spread to other cities, including New York, Chicago and Milwaukee, prompting clashes between police and demonstrators.
Elon Musk expressed regret on social media for his recent posts about President Donald Trump, saying they "went too far." Listen to the Elon, Inc. panel discuss how the drama of the past week has cooled down.

Supply Chains Loop In Canada

Workers at Windsor Fulfillment Corp. unload a truck earlier this month. Photographer: Brett Gundlock for Bloomberg Businessweek

Not long after President Donald Trump announced his "Liberation Day" tariffs, Todd Pollock got a call from a business with a problem. The caller, whose company manufactures home furnishings in China, had about 50 shipping containers on their way to Southern California, each facing a surprise 145% tariff bill. It was too late to divert them to another port.

So Pollock offered a creative solution: Change the final destination on the shipping manifest to his warehouse in Windsor, Ontario—thousands of miles away—then transport everything there in special bonded trucks, which exempt their contents from duties while they're in transit. Legally, it was as if the products never landed in the US at all. Now palettes of those China-made furnishings are stacked almost 30 feet high in Pollock's warehouse just across the border from Detroit, alongside boxes of toys, apparel, pet goods and other inanimate refugees from Trump's latest trade war—and Pollock, co-founder of Windsor Fulfillment Corp., only sees demand for space like his growing.

"The higher the tariffs, the better it is to have your inventory in Canada," says Pollock, 59, who's drawn up plans to expand his 200,000-square-foot warehouse by 50% once the US levies stabilize. Companies are starting to say, "'Wow, I can put my inventory in a Windsor, or a Toronto or a Vancouver, and fulfill the US from that side versus the reverse. Now my North American distribution center is in Canada.'"

Although storing an imported good in a Canadian warehouse on its way to the US doesn't forever halt the tariffs, Ari Altstedter writes, the delay can be useful for companies: US Tariff Limbo Gives Canadian Warehouses a New Lease on Life

B-Schools Welcome More African Students

Michael Ibonye is pursuing an MBA at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. Photographer: Adetona Omokanye

Michael Ibonye had an enviable career path ahead of him in 2022 by any measure, but especially by the standards of his home country. As a strategist for the African mobile phone company MTN, in Lagos, Nigeria, Ibonye had a hand in an array of future-forward projects, from broadband expansion to streamlining operations. "I was the coordinating point for a lot of the strategic initiatives that we were implementing across the business," he says.

But Ibonye had ambitions of one day running a company, and that, he concluded, would require building a global career, as his mentors had. "Those networks and those relationships, and the experiences that they brought from different markets around the world, helped to make them successful along that journey to the C-suite," he says. So he applied to seven business schools in North America and eventually enrolled at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business.

Ten years ago he might have been the only African in his class. But he was one of 18 arriving in the fall of 2024, mainly from Nigeria and Ghana, a cohort that made up 6% of the class of 2026. This year applications to Georgetown's class of 2027 were relatively flat from almost every corner of the world except for Africa, says Anne Kilby, the school's associate dean for MBA admissions. "We saw a big jump," she says. "And the class entering last year already had record-high African enrollment." One hundred eleven Africans from 13 countries applied, and 12 admitted applicants have so far committed to enrolling this coming fall.

Robb Mandelbaum writes about the admissions surge and how it might be affected by Trump administration policies: African Students Are Flocking to US MBA Programs

Dinner Via Robot

$80 million

That's how much Coco Robotics, a startup that operates a fleet of cooler-size delivery robots on wheels, has raised in funding from OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman and other backers. It's a sign that automated delivery technology is advancing.

Big Tech in Washington

"We said, 'Oh, my God, they're going to kill us. They're going to kill our companies.'"

Marc Andreessen

California venture capitalist

After being rattled by President Joe Biden's policies on AI and crypto, the Silicon Valley investor shifted to support Trump and now has allies throughout the administration. Read the full story here.