Christmas Games Nearly Erase NBA’s Season-Long Ratings Deficit

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For the last two weeks, the sports-media cognoscenti have gotten themselves all worked up about the NBA’s TV ratings, divining disaster from a few desultory sniffs through the early-season results.

For some, the declines were symptomatic of a greater disorder originating from within the league itself, something egregious enough to effectively drive a fifth of the audience away within the span of a single year.

People really don’t like 3-pointers anymore. Also: Everyone’s too nice. And foreign. And “woke.” That kind of thing.

The hot takes begat takes that were hotter still, until Christmas arrived with a sleigh stuffed with holiday cheer and a reminder of better times. The good ol’ days, when nobody paid any attention to the NBA’s ratings until Boxing Day because why would you.

In the wake of a holiday quintuple-header that drew 84% more viewers than a year ago and gave Disney its strongest Dec. 25 ratings since 2019, the NBA’s TV picture is suddenly looking a lot less Grinched up. Season-to-date, the league’s deliveries are now down 4% compared with the analogous period in 2023, which marks a considerable turnaround from the pre-holiday 21% drop. (ESPN, for its part, is now in the black, up 4% year-over-year.)

Leading the turnaround was the Lakers-Warriors primetime tilt, which averaged 7.76 million viewers on ABC/ESPN. LeBron James and Steph Curry have been lights-out on Christmas Day, and when they square off against each other, big earners for Disney. In 2015, Cavs-Warriors averaged 11.2 million viewers, making it the third most-watched Xmas Day game on record, while the following season saw the two teams draw an audience of 10.1 million—a number the Lakers and Warriors duplicated in 2018.

Aha! What’s that you say? Just nine years ago, the in-their-prime pairing drew far bigger numbers than their mellower, wrinklier present-day counterparts? You mean to tell me that the same year in which 98.2 million U.S. households were subscribed to the legacy pay-TV bundle—roughly 48.4 million more subs than is the case today—the Cavs and Warriors drew 3.4 million more viewers? Per Nielsen,…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/christmas-games-nearly-erase-nba-140021493.html

Author : Sportico

Publish date : 2024-12-27 14:00:00

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