On June 12, 2002, the NBA died. That was the night of Game 4 of the 2002 NBA Finals, when the Los Angeles Lakers finished off the overmatched New Jersey Nets. That was also the last night that NBC Sports aired an NBA game.
Since that night, NBA ratings have plummeted. The amount of games on network television have done the same. Only six NBA games since that night have averaged a rating of 10 or higher, and no games have had a rating higher than 13.8.
It would be easy to blame the fact that, starting with the 2002-03 NBA season, games moved primarily to cable. The rationale behind David Stern’s move to cable was that ratings would increase on network television due to fewer games being available. Every game on the network partner, now ABC, would take on added importance and more people would watch. That hasn’t happened. Regular season ratings for the NBA on ABC have dropped every single season since the network began airing games on Christmas Day 2002.
Playoff ratings have been worse. In its final season on NBC, the NBA Playoffs averaged over a 5 rating, excluding the Finals. Two Conference Final games drew over 10 percent of the viewing audience, and Game 7 between the Lakers and Kings drew a 14.2 rating. Since 2002, the highest rated non-NBA Finals game on network television was Game 6 of the Spurs/Lakers semifinal series in 2003, which drew a 6.5 rating in prime time. To put that in perspective, NBC drew a 5.9 rating for Game 1 of the Blazers/Lakers first round series in 2002. More ominously, that Spurs/Lakers game stands as the most viewed non-NBA Finals playoff game since 2002, with only 9 million viewers — and that goes for broadcast and cable.
9 million viewers is the high watermark for ABC (outside of the NBA Finals). It has only been reached once (the second most viewed non-Finals game on ABC was Cavs/Pistons Game 7 last year, with 8.8 million viewers). NBC had at least 9 million viewers nine times in 2002.
The NBA can deal with smaller numbers on cable. Small numbers were expected on cable, and were essentially a necessary evil — as long as numbers on broadcast went up. As mentioned before, David Stern’s thinking behind this television deal was that fewer games would equal more eyeballs. With numbers on ABC continuing to shrink, the deal is looking more and more like a complete failure. No NBA Finals game on NBC ever got a rating lower than 8. And the 8 rating was for Game 5 of the 1994 Rockets/Knicks series, when O.J. Simpson was on every other channel (including many NBC affiliates). ABC has had ratings dip below 8 in twelve of the twenty-four NBA Finals games it has televised. In other words, half of the NBA Finals games on network television in the past four years have had ratings below 8.
ABC has aired seventy-two regular season NBA games. Twelve of those games have had a rating over 3. In other words, one sixth of all NBA regular season games on network television in the past four years have had a rating above 3. Eight of those twelve were on Christmas; excluding those, one sixteenth (four out of sixty-four) of the NBA games on ABC have had a rating higher than three.
To be fair, baseball and college basketball have comparable regular season ratings (most college basketball regular season games on network TV average about a 1.5 rating). But this is not what David Stern had in mind when he signed a six year deal with Disney and Time Warner.
How much of this can be blamed on declining interest in the NBA? That depends on whether or not one believes that ABC is responsible for that declining interest. More on that later.
