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Thread: 2020 NBA Finals Game 1 Viewership Down by 45% Versus Last Year And Lowest Ratings Since 1994
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10-01-2020, 09:45 PM #1
2020 NBA Finals Game 1 Viewership Down by 45% Versus Last Year And Lowest Ratings Since 1994
https://www.breitbart.com/sports/202...st-since-1994/
Instead of posting the good, if not great numbers that the NBA should have drawn for a Game 1 Finals clash including with millions at home on lockdown and LeBron James on the floor, the NBA saw a catastrophic drop in both ratings and viewership.
According to the Hollywood Reporter:
The opening game of the series between the Los Angeles Lakers and Miami Heat brought 7.41 million viewers to ABC, the smallest audience for the finals since at least 1994, when total viewers began to be regularly recorded. The previous low was 8.06 million for Game 3 of the 2007 NBA Finals.
The game, which took place about four months later than the usual start date for the NBA Finals, was down by about 45 percent in total viewers vs. the U.S. audience for last year’s finals opener between the Golden State Warriors and Toronto Raptors. The two conference finals series that wrapped up last week were down a collective 35 percent year to year.
Massive declines in viewership and ratings are nothing new for the NBA. Since the league restarted its season with a full embrace of social justice activism, the NBA has suffered huge drops in numbers. A counter-intuitive development for a league that restarted after fans had been starved for sports for five months and much of the country was at home due to coronavirus.
In early September, a Harris poll found that most fans were watching fewer games because the NBA had become “too political.”
Absolutely horrid ratings for the NBA considering one you have Lebron James in the Finals, two you have the Lakers (probably the most popular NBA team), and three last year you had a team from outside the United States so Canada ratings don't count in US viewership.Selling All My Cards Here------>Hidden Content
Baseball Autograph and Game Used Only Trade Page: pwaldo.webs.com/
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10-14-2020, 10:37 PM #2
It starts and ends there.
Black Trump.
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10-15-2020, 10:26 AM #3
Anyone who quits watching sports because they don't agree with the social stance of the players is a moron - especially when genesis of the whole social stance has been misconstrued since Kaepernick day one.
Sports viewership is down across the board, not just in the NBA:
https://www.si.com/extra-mustard/202...s-ratings-2020
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10-15-2020, 09:16 PM #4
Okay where did anybody say otherwise? Also the other sports don't have the most popular athlete in the world playing in the finals for them. All I heard the past couple of years when the ratings were down was because it was the boring Spurs or that nobody liked the style of play of the Warriors but when Lebron gets back in the finals they will spike. They did not. Why?
Pretty weird article. I like how one of the excuses for sports ratings going down is because of "cord cutting" (the NBA Finals was on FREE TV BTW) but then they talk about cable news ratings going up or something. Isn't cable news on cable TV? Or are they just cutting the sports cord? lol
If anybody wants to get free tv which includes Fox, ABC, NBC, ABC, and CW (could be a lot more channels depending on your area) just get an antenna and hook it up to your TV. They sell some cheapo ones that are basically just plug in and you are ready to go but the better ones get you more channels. The only cost is the cost of the antenna. Stop paying for cable or satellite TV if you aren't watching stuff. You could be saving yourself hundreds of dollars every month. After 5 years you could end up saving over $7,000+ on cable bills.
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10-16-2020, 09:35 AM #5
That was not meant to accuse you of anything, so sorry if that's how it came across. My point was more about the tone of the article, which is due to its source, Breitbart.
Trump has consistently pointed fingers at the NBA and its ratings drops, blaming it on players and the Black Lives Matter movement, and he and Breitbart (and OANN, and Fox News) are basically in an echo chamber. The ratings of all sports are down, so only mentioning the NBA propagates a biased, incomplete picture.
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10-17-2020, 08:04 PM #6
I admittedly watched only part of game one and then closed my Internet stream when the Lakers took a big lead. Coming into the Finals, while I had respect for the Heat, I didn't really think they had a shot against LeBron, AD, and the Lakers. I and many others predicted well before the season got underway that the Lakers would likely win it all. So I didn't watch much. Not much competition.
Combine that with the protests (which many don't like, whether we agree or not), the unusual start of the playoffs due to COVID vs. its normal time (usually June), cord cutting, and more entertainment options than ever in 2020, I'm not surprised the ratings were low.
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10-19-2020, 09:54 PM #7
Yeah okay I get it now. It was just that I posted about the ratings drop in other sports in their sections. Didn't really get much in the way of replies so I don't if you saw it but yeah the majority of sports have seen a drop in ratings lately.
I agree with your other points but cord cutting can't do anything to hurt the NBA Finals ratings. Not a knock of you because I've seen even places like ESPN try and claim it but cord cutting only hurts cable ratings. I haven't had cable for years but I still can get the Super Bowl, NFL games, MLB games on Fox, the World Series, the NBA Finals, golf stuff, and whatever channel the NHL Finals are on.
Also there are no movies coming out now and most places are basically shut down where you have no entertainment options. Even shows like Game of Thrones and Big Bang Theory which were hurting sports ratings are gone and The Walking Dead is a shell of itself. Sports other than facing each other aren't facing squat for competition on TV. Do I think CNN viewers are torn between watching that and the NBA Finals? No. And I don't see how the NBA can struggle against baseball and hockey when they are were suppose to be "more popular" than those. A couple years ago people were posting on here about how the NBA could surpass the NFL in ratings when the NFL took a hit and now the NBA is sinking into 4th place territory.
Like I saw before sports is struggling but the NBA got Lebron and the Lakers in the NBA Finals. What would the ratings have been if the Nuggets faced the Heat? They got dealt a pretty good hand and it still came out horrible.
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10-20-2020, 02:11 PM #8
Well that's fair. I think those last two factors, if they were factors as I originally considered, would nonetheless be more distant ones vs. the first two I listed. I think you mentioned all sports are down across the board...we're in a very divided political climate, and most athletes from most sports are getting more political. I just saw today there was a reaction to what Troy Aikman said about the military flying planes over football stadiums...I mean it's everywhere. I think people are more glued to the political wars than anything, and rather than get politics from sports, they want to tune out sports now and get politics from actual political sources. People are glued to their phones, computers, and political TV. And rather than hear from LeBron, they'll not watch him and instead get into politics mode from those other outlets.
With all that in mind, I definitely don't expect ratings to be anywhere near they were during the 1990s height with MJ and a more apolitical, different social climate from today. MJ was always safely apolitical, basketball was in its golden age without all the 3 point stuff, the Finals took place at a normal time...I don't see us ever coming anywhere near that point again anytime soon. It does interest me that these were the lowest ratings since 1994...that's when MJ was retired, OJ was in the white Bronco, and again people were way more interested in stuff like that than they were seeing Hakeem vs. Ewing.
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11-02-2020, 10:23 PM #9
I'm not sure though that the ratings drop would be a given. The ratings were strong as hell for baseball's opening night. Yankees versus Nationals on ESPN. But I did hear people objecting to the protesting. The NBA when it came back had good ratings at least the first couple of them. I could understand people not wanting to watch pointless regular season NBA games because they were all waiting for the playoffs and all. I even heard the Nuggets versus Clippers ratings and the Nuggets versus the Jazz had some high ratings.
But you couldn't really compare the whole NBA playoffs this year to last years because of the different start times. Since they were in the bubble you had games that were basically midday. Which is cool for people who can watch the games all day long but we all knew those would be down because you have people at work that can't see them. So to me the only fair comparison would have been the NBA Finals. On the same time and network as last year. And it was basically awful and that's not even adding in the return of Lebron James and the LAKERS playing. If they can't do well with the Lakers and Lebron who is going to boost the ratings? Seems to me the people who were blasting the Warriors for bringing down the NBA ratings over the years were completely wrong.
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