The San Antonio Spurs’ Game 1 victory over the Utah Jazz drew a 3.8 overnight rating, the second-lowest of the playoffs in the late afternoon Sunday timeslot for ABC. Only Game 4 of the semi-finals between the Detroit Pistons and Chicago Bulls, a game Detroit entered up 3-0, drew a lower overnight.
The 3.8 overnight is down 43% from the 6.7/15 the comparable Cavaliers/Pistons Game 7 drew on the same date last year. The rating is also down 27% from the 5.2/11 for Game 1 of the 2005 Western Conference Finals between the Spurs and the Suns, which also aired on a Sunday afternoon.
The 3.8 overnight is the lowest for an NBA Conference Final game in at least the past ten years, and likely the lowest ever. In fact, only one Conference Final game has drawn a final rating less than 4.0 in that span of time — Nets/Pistons Game 1 in 2003, which drew a broadcast network record low of 3.5. Despite the record low rating, that game still drew a 4.8 overnight rating in a weaker timeslot (1:30 p.m).
Considering that the NBA has been incurring staggering drops from the overnight to the final rating this postseason, there is every likelihood that this game will end up with a final rating lower than 3.0 — unheard of for a Conference Final game on broadcast television — and it is extremely likely that the final rating for Game 1 will end up lower than the final rating for Game 1 of last year’s Western Conference Final, which aired on cable (TNT).
