By John Nestor

Sunday's Game 6, in which the Dallas Mavericks cliched their first NBA championship, was viewed by nearly 24 million people.

Bolstered by the interest in the Mavs' series with the Miami Heat, ABC had its most-watched week during the summer season in nearly a decade.

According to the Nielsen Company, the Mavericks' series victory over the Miami Heat was seen by an average of 17.3 million people over the six games.

Those numbers are slightly off of viewership for last year's Lakers-Celtics series, which had the advantage of going to a Game 7 as well as featuring two of the league's iconic franchises.

With LeBron James and Dwyane Wade leading the Heat and the Mavs featuring stars of their own in Dirk nowitzki and Jason Kidd, Games 4, 5 and 6 of the Heat-Mavericks series topped those corresponding games from last year.

ABC led all networks for the week with an average of 9.2 million viewers in prime time (5.5 rating, 10 share). CBS had 6.5 million viewers (4.2, 7), NBC had 5.8 million (3.5, 6), Fox had 4.5 million (2.7, 5), ION Television had 1.1 million (0.7, 1) and the CW had 790,000 (0.5, 1).

For the week of June 6-12, ABC had the top four shows,

- NBA Finals: Dallas vs. Miami, Game 6, ABC, 23.88 million viewers

- NBA Trophy Presentation," ABC, 21.85 million

- NBA Finals: Miami vs. Dallas, Game 5, ABC, 18.32 million

- NBA Finals: Miami vs. Dallas, Game 4, ABC, 16.13 million

 

ABC Gets Big Ratings Boost from NBA Finals