The Finals Conclude Season of Success for Nba in 2003-04; League Sets All-Time Attendance Record, Opens Reading & Learning Centers in LA and Detroit and Sees Increases in Finals TV Ratings and NBA.com traffic.

NEW YORK -- With the Detroit Pistons victory over the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 5 of The Finals, the league officially closed the books on the highly successful 2003-04 season.

The Finals provided great increases in TV ratings and saw the league break the regular and post season attendance record. During The Finals, the NBA and its teams created the 90th and 91st NBA Reading and Learning Centers while setting the all-time NBA Store on NBA.com sales record.

Finals Ratings

--ABC's five-game of The Finals averaged a national household rating of 11.5/20, 77% higher than the 2003 Nets/Spurs NBA Finals six-game series average of 6.5/12 and 13% higher than the 2002 Nets/Lakers NBA Finals four-game series average of 10.2/19.

--Game 5 drew more total viewers (21.84 million) than any Finals Game 1-5 since The Finals in 1998.

--The five-game average in Total Viewers (17.94 million) is the highest since the The Finals in 2001 (2003: 9.86 million, 2002: 15.68 million).

--From Sunday 6/6/04 through Tuesday 6/15/04, ABC's broadcasts of The Finals (Games 1-5) were the five highest rated programs among households, viewers and all key male and adult demographics.

Full-Season Ratings

--ABC - The full season on ABC (29 games) averaged a 4.6 rating, up +10% versus last year's 27-game average (4.2 rtg.).

--TNT - The full season on TNT (95 games) averaged a 2.3 rating, up +10% versus last year's 98-game average (2.1 rtg.).

--Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals earned a 7.3 rating and averaged 6.5 million households, making it the most viewed NBA Playoff game in cable history.

--The ratings for the NBA Playoffs helped TNT become the #1 ranked cable outlet for the important sweeps month of May.

--ESPN - The full season on ESPN (90 games) averaged a 1.8 rating, up +20% versus last year's 90-game average (1.5 rtg.).

--Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals earned a 5.0 rating and averaged 4.4 million households, making it the most viewed basketball game in ESPN history and the most viewed 2nd Quarter program in the network's history.

Attendance

--The NBA set the all-time record for regular and postseason attendance at Game 3 of The Finals on June 10 at The Palace of Auburn Hills in Detroit. The final attendance total of 21,855,125 for the 2003-04 NBA season surpassed the previous all-time record of 21,797,222 fans who attended regular and postseason games during the 1995-96 season.

--This year's average regular season attendance of 17,050 fans per game is the highest since the 1997-98 season (17,135), the last season the NBA averaged more than 17,000 fans per game. NBA arenas were filled to more than 89.2% capacity, the fourth highest percent capacity all-time and the highest total since the 1997-98 season.

Read To Achieve

--Through the Read to Achieve program, the NBA's year-round initiative that encourages young people to develop a life-long love of reading, the league and its teams have opened 25 new Reading & Learning Centers this season alone, including one at the Ithuteng Trust, a school located in South Africa. With the opening of the Lakers' Reading and Learning Center in Los Angeles and the Pistons' Reading and Learning Center in Detroit during The Finals, the NBA and its teams have now teamed with Dell and Scholastic to create the 90th and 91st centers since the program began in 2001. Read to Achieve, the most extensive educational outreach initiative in the history of professional sports, reaches an estimated 50 million children a year.

NBA.com

--NBA.com set the all-time traffic record to the site for the 2003-04 NBA regular and postseason with more than 3.1 billion page views and 465 million visits. The new records represent an increase of 41% and 30% respectively when compared to the previous highs established during the 2002-03 regular and postseason.

--For the first time, more than half of all page views and visits throughout the 2003-04 season came from fans located outside the U.S. - representing more international traffic to NBA.com than any other U.S. based sports Web site.

Merchandise Sales on NBA.com

--The NBA Store on NBA.com set the all-time record in terms of sales on June 16, the day after the Detroit Pistons won the NBA Championship.

Marketing Partners

--NBA marketing partners utilized their relationship with the league with twenty partners conducting promotions during Destination Finals.

--Immediately following Detroit's Game 5 victory, General Mills announced that the 2004 NBA Champion Detroit Pistons will appear on the cover of the Wheaties NBA Championship Box in the coming weeks.