The Hawks tight Game 7 win over the 76ers drew huge ratings in metro Atlanta.
Steve Koonin, chief executive officer for the Hawks, said he expected good ratings, but they came in even stronger than he anticipated.
The game averaged a 13.22 rating in metro Atlanta and a 15.21 rating in the fourth quarter. It peaked at 18.54 as the game came to a close with the Hawks closing out a 103-96 win. The Hawks are now in the Eastern Conference finals against the Bucks.
“These are gargantuan numbers,” Koonin said, noting that a whopping 37% of TVs that were on Sunday night were tuned to the game in its final 15 minutes, according to Nielsen figures. The game averaged a 27% share of TVs over the entire game, a still impressive figure.
Only one Hawks game has generated higher ratings that Koonin is aware of: game one of the 2015 Eastern Conference finals against the Cavaliers and LeBron James. The Hawks got swept in that series.
The entire Game 7 was close, with no team able to extend a lead beyond seven. This kept the viewers actively engaged.
This is only the second time the Hawks have ever been in the Eastern Conference championship. Koonin, who has seen State Farm Arena go from a restricted 3,200 pandemic attendance to wild sold-out crowds of 16,000-plus again, said sales for the conference finals have been expectedly brisk.
Koonin spent 14 years at Turner Entertainment Networks as the impresario who built the TNT and TBS brands to new heights and convinced Conan O’Brien to join TBS in 2010 (O’Brien’s final show on the network is Thursday). He took over the Hawks in 2014.
To see TNT generate such strong ratings for the Hawks game was heartening to him. “It’s like my life coming full circle,” he said.
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