Ratings predictions for a busy weekend of sports TV, including the NBA and NHL conference finals, Brittney Griner‘s return, the PGA Championship and The Preakness Stakes.
Can the Lakers stay alive and keep the NBA’s momentum going?
It has been quite a run for the Los Angeles Lakers. Coming off of a miserable 33-win campaign last season, L.A. started this season 0-5 — then 2-10 — and remained stubbornly under .500 for much of the year. The season’s lone highlight was LeBron James setting the all-time scoring record, and the lowlights too many to count. When GM Rob Pelinka overhauled the roster at the trade deadline, there was a spark of hope — dashed almost immediately by an injury to James. Yet the team stayed afloat without him, he returned sooner than expected, and they clawed their way into the Play-in Tournament. After avoiding disaster against shorthanded Minnesota in the play-in, humbling mouthy Memphis in round one and dethroning defending champion Golden State in round two, the seventh-seeded Lakers are in the conference finals for the first time since their title run in the “bubble” three years ago — a fact that would have been hard to believe just weeks ago.
If the above sounds a bit valedictory, there is a reason. Down 0-2 to #1 seed Denver, the Lakers’ stunning turnaround may be in its third act.
Once L.A. eliminated the Warriors in the second round, the team assumed the title of ‘biggest TV draw remaining’ in the playoffs. There is little doubt that the NBA and ESPN/ABC would prefer a Lakers-Celtics Finals to any combination of alternatives. Yet this would not be the first time the league had both teams in their respective conference finals and came up empty (1986, 2002 and even the “bubble” come to mind). If the Lakers cannot defeat Denver, the ideal scenario would have them stretch the series — not just for the obvious reasons (the longer a series, the better the ratings), but in the hopes that the more viewers sample the Nuggets, the more they might continue watching them in the NBA Finals.
If nothing else, the more Laker games remaining in the playoffs, the more superlatives the NBA can get in before the ratings gravy train gets thrown into reverse. Given his age and how unexpected the Lakers run this season has been, this may well be the last time the league benefits from James’ presence this deep in the playoffs. Is it a particularly good thing for the NBA to still be so dependent on a 38-year-old James (and 35-year-old Stephen Curry)? Not particularly. Even after all of the ratings success this postseason, can one really say that the NBA is as healthy a TV property as it should be? Probably not. It is what it is.
Saturday’s Game 3 is LeBron James’ first primetime conference final game on ABC. Not ‘in X number of years,’ but ever. (James is playing in his 20th season and 12th conference final.) It is just the ninth total primetime conference final game on ABC in its two decades as the NBA’s sole over-the-air partner. Using Lakers-Warriors as a guide, a second round series that put up conference final-level numbers, the Saturday night Game 3 on ABC averaged more viewers (8.37M) than any other game outside of the Game 6 clincher (8.64M). No conference final game in five years has cracked the eight million viewer mark.
NBA Western Conference Finals Game 3: Nuggets-Lakers (8:30p Sat ABC). Prediction: 8.25M.
Will Heat-Celtics bounce back in Games 2 and 3?
If Lakers-Celtics is option A, Nuggets-Heat is somewhere below “none of the above” on the NBA’s list of desired NBA Finals matchups. Nonetheless, Denver is up 2-0 and Miami 1-0 heading into Friday night. The Heat somehow have the air of scrappy underdog despite making their third conference final in four years, seeking their second NBA Finals over the same span. That tends to be the case when one’s successes are written off as flukes time and time again. A far cry from the “Heatles” of a decade ago, this version of the Heat has yet to move the ratings needle. Viewership has declined for most of Miami’s game windows this postseason, including their conference final Game 1 upset of Boston, (which may have been impacted by a YouTube TV outage).
That Game 1 result seems likely to fuel viewer interest in Games 2 and 3 this weekend, but will it be enough to match last year’s equivalent games of the same series? Games 2 and 3 last year averaged 6.05 million on ESPN and 6.81 million on ABC respectively.
NBA Eastern Conference Finals Game 2: Heat-Celtics (8:30p Fri TNT) & Game 3: Celtics-Heat (8:30p Sun TNT). Predictions: 6.01 and 6.74M.
How big will Brittney Griner’s return be?
A decade ago, the biggest story on the opening weekend of the WNBA season was the debut of a much-hyped college star out of Baylor, Brittney Griner. Her arrival was to be a watershed moment for a struggling league, ushering in an era of on-court dominance and off-court publicity. Yet after winning a title in year two, she spent most of her career under the national radar.
Griner was never going to dominate pros the way she did college players at Baylor, and on perennial title-contender Phoenix, she played a secondary role to the greatest player of the era (Diana Taurasi). Legal trouble in just her third year (a domestic violence charge at the height of national attention to that issue in post-Ray Rice 2015) did not help her marketability. By 2021, when Phoenix made its first Finals since that 2014 title season, Griner had settled into a status as a player known primarily within the niche of WNBA fandom.
Then came 2022 and the life-changing flight to Russia that vaulted her to the front page of every newspaper. Marooned for most of last year in a Russian prison, Griner became a lightning rod in the ever-tedious American culture war, taking on a profile higher than anyone could have ever imagined — or wanted — when she came into the league. Freed in a prisoner exchange with an arms dealer, the kind of storyline movies are made of, Griner is returning to the court Friday as the league’s most prominent player by a wide margin.
That Griner is the biggest story on opening day is perhaps the only parallel between 2013 and 2023. Unlike those dreary days a decade ago, when the only way to tell the team uniforms apart was the ad on the front of the jersey, the league has a bit of momentum. There is a star-studded super-team in New York, the defending champions in Las Vegas have added Candace Parker, and the lingering glow from the record audience for last month’s NCAA women’s basketball final. The WNBA has not cracked the million-viewer mark since Parker’s first game in 2008; if that streak continues past this season, the league will have underachieved.
With a direct lead-in from an NHL conference final game, Griner’s season debut Friday night might have the best shot of the season at crossing the million-viewer threshold. The only potential issue is an 11 PM ET start time that may be the latest ever for a WNBA game on national TV. Expect an elevated audience for Griner’s home debut on Sunday as well, if short of seven figures.
WNBA: Mercury-Sparks (11p Fri ESPN) & Sky-Mercury (4p Sun ESPN). Prediction: 1.18M and 718K.
Can the NHL’s all-Sun Belt conference finals defy expectations?
An all-Sun Belt final four is presumably not what the NHL or its television partners were seeking at the start of the playoffs, but all is not lost. Last year’s Western Conference Final was a four-game sweep involving Canadian market Edmonton. Even an all-Sun Belt matchup is preferable to that, assuming a more competitive series. Viewership was quite poor the last time the Stars and Golden Knights met in the conference final, but that was in the “bubble” during football season. In a normal time of year, this matchup could easily defy expectations and deliver the largest audience for a Western final in four years. Expect Friday’s Game 1 to surpass last year’s Oilers-Avalanche opener on TNT (1.82M).
NHL Western Conference Final Game 1: Stars-Golden Knights (8:30p Fri ESPN). Prediction: 2.01M.
When saddled with a non-traditional matchup, one needs as many good, compelling games as possible. The Panthers-Hurricanes Eastern Conference Final lived up to its end of the bargain Thursday night with a quadruple-overtime opener. Will that fuel viewer curiosity for Game 2? Given the Game 1 audience of 1.43 million sank 39% from Rangers-Lightning last year, that may not be enough. Last year’s Game 2 audience was 2.34 million.
NHL Eastern Conference Final Game 2: Panthers-Hurricanes (8p Sat TNT). Prediction: 1.69M.
Additional predictions
As well as the PGA Tour was doing much of the season, it entered the PGA Championship mired in a recent slump. Seven of the past eight windows on broadcast television have declined from last year, with some steeper double-digit drops the past two weeks. Thursday’s opening round did not buck the trend, as the audience of 1.07 million declined 27% from last year to a four-year low. Even though last year’s third and final round viewership did not set too high a bar (3.62 and 5.27 million viewers respectively), all signs point toward a decline.
PGA Championship, third and final rounds (1p Sat & Sun CBS). Predictions: 3.36 and 5.07M.
Kentucky Derby winner Mage is the favorite in Saturday’s Preakness Stakes, which by itself should be enough to result in a year-over-year increase. Last year’s celebrated Derby winner Rich Strike skipped the second leg of the Triple Crown, which at 5.26 million viewers was the least-watched (excluding the months-delayed edition in 2020) in the NBC era.
The Preakness Stakes, race segment (post time 7:01p Sat NBC). Prediction: 6.02M
Last week’s predictions
— NBA Playoffs: Sixers-Celtics Game 7. Prediction: 8.62M; result: 8.44M
— XFL Championship Game. Prediction: 1.35M; result: 1.44M
— Stanley Cup Playoffs: Stars-Kraken Game 6. Prediction: 1.63M; result: 2.04M
— Stanley Cup Playoffs: Golden Knights-Oilers Game 6. Prediction: 1.25M; result: 1.65M
— NASCAR Cup Series: Darlington. Prediction: 2.55M; result: 2.69M
