How worried should NBA be about Lakers-Heat drawing fewest viewers ever?
1. While the NFL is only suffering from a very slight ratings dip, the NBA has seen a severe viewer tune out. The question is, just how alarmed should the league be by this development.
Here are the numbers for the first three games of the Finals between the Heat and Lakers:
Game 1: 7.4 million viewers
Game 2: 4.5 million viewers
Game 3: 4.4 million viewers
Those numbers for Game 2 and 3 are all-time lows for the NBA Finals.
Now for the perspective.
Game 2 took place on a Friday night. The NBA never plays a Finals game on a Friday night because viewership for Friday's is terrible.
Game 3 took place on Sunday night going head-to-head with the NFL.
That explains the dip of three-million viewers from Game 1 to Game 3.
The real issue is that the first game drew seven million viewers while last year's Finals between the Warriors and Raptors averaged 15.1 million viewers.
Obviously, scheduling is a huge issue. The NBA Finals take centerstage in June when they only have to compete with the NHL and regular season baseball. Now the Finals are competing with the NFL, postseason baseball and college football.
As with the NFL, you can't discount how much cord cutting and cable news are hurting network television. Cable news ratings are up 37 percent from a year ago. Network prime time ratings are down 47 percent.
Even with all these factors, the league has to be worried about the Finals having no ratings juice at all, especially with the Lakers and LeBron James in there.
You don't need me to tell you that this was far from a traditional season and the games play differently on TV without fans in the building and the crazy atmosphere of an NBA crowd.
You could've made the argument that with this being such an unusual season, the NBA could throw this year's ratings out the window and just focus on next season, but the viewership numbers for the past two games are so bad that they have to worry the league.
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