NBA Finals see worst ratings since ‘bubble’ year
At the risk of triggering NBA fanboys Bill Simmons and Ryen Russillo, we are here to report that just 8.76 million people watched Game 2 of the NBA Finals.
Outside the “bubble” year, which the fanboys previously said didn’t count, the Thunder-Pacers on Sunday was the least-watched Game 2 of the Finals since 2007, when the Cavaliers-Spurs averaged just 8.55 million.
Granted, that matchup ran opposite the series finale of “The Sopranos,” exactly 18 years ago today.
#RIPTony.
Game 1 of the series drew only slightly better at 8.91 million viewers, marking the least-watched opening Game 1 of an NBA Finals series of the Nielsen meter era (since 1988), aside from the COVID years in 2020 and 2021.
According to Sports Media Watch, Pacers-Thunder is only the second Finals series of the Nielsen people meter era in which neither Game 1 nor Game 2 hit the nine million mark.
Yet, according to Russillo, the NBA ratings are only a topic because of those damn right wingers.
“A lot of the ratings decline stuff is driven by people’s political beliefs. If you’re really right wing, you love the idea of the NBA being a dying product because it’s probably the most progressive of the leagues,” he said last week.
Not exactly. The ratings are just bad.
Meanwhile, nearly every other American sports professional or college league is up year over year–from men’s and women’s college basketball to WNBA, from MLB to the NFL.
The NBA is the outlier.
While the fanboys will surely blame this on the near-record lows of The Finals, which were the product of two small-market teams, the NBA made strategic changes to the salary cap to help teams like the Thunder and Pacers compete.
In 2017, the NBA introduced the “supermax” to incentivize star players to re-sign with the team that drafted them. Thus, the days of superstars jumping to major markets like Los Angeles and Miami are no more.
And considering the age of Oklahoma City’s roster and its future draft picks, the NBA best learn how to sell small-market teams to the masses.
Something tells us Simmons and Russillo won’t mention The Finals ratings on their podcasts this weekend…
