Ratings predictions and analysis for a big weekend of sports television, including the NBA’s dream matchup of LeBron James and Stephen Curry, the Kentucky Derby, and more. Despite the big ratings, is the LeBron James-Stephen Curry rivalry getting its proper due?
Despite the big ratings, is the NBA’s dream matchup being sold short?
There has rarely been as high-profile an NBA playoff series than LeBron James’ Lakers against Stephen Curry’s Warriors, a pairing of four-time NBA champions who squared off in four-straight NBA Finals and are 1A and 1B on the list of the league’s biggest television draws (choose your own order). After the Lakers were the top draw of the regular season, playing in 7 of the 11 most-watched games, the Warriors have seized the mantle in the playoffs with six of the top nine audiences through Thursday. That includes Games 1 and 2 of this series, which at 7.36 and 7.35 million viewers respectively rank as the two most-watched early round games on cable since 2012.
Viewership has yet to hit the heights of 2012 (or the preceding three years), a stretch in which James’ Heat (and Kobe Bryant’s Lakers) delivered some of the biggest NBA audiences since the Jordan era. That could change the longer the series goes.
Yet like many NBA stories in the ESPN era, wherein viewers are more often told of Stephen A. Smith’s Knicks fandom than any of the players’ personal journeys, the James-Curry rivalry has been perhaps underplayed. That these two stars were born in the same Akron hospital is its own bit of lore. Both were known before entering the NBA, James as a world-famous high school player and Curry as the star of an underdog mid-major in the NCAA Tournament. James entered the league with the highest possible expectations and no matter his run of historical successes is still viewed by his overwhelming number of critics as falling short. The narrative is always that if he just adds “one more” championship, there will be no question, but questioning James’ status among the greats has created careers in this industry. Curry came into the league with comparably few expectations and has blown past what was believed possible, even as he still seems to seek his due (his documentary series on Apple TV+ is titled “Underrated.”)
The differences in their public perception would be interesting to dig into, but so too are the similarities. The two biggest stars of this era still seem, to quote James after winning his fourth title, to be seeking their “damn respect.”
It is easier to get said respect when you have an entire media apparatus behind you as Michael Jordan did with NBC, Nike and Gatorade, to say nothing of a mass culture that could absorb those hosannas uncritically without scores of ever-present social media ombudsmen blowing up the narrative. The 1990s was the era of promotion and this is the era of debate, rankings and unending threats to players’ never-settled legacies. It is not much of a way to tell (or sell) a compelling story, but it certainly ups the stakes.
In the old days, and perhaps again starting in 2025, Warriors-Lakers would have occupied what is prime real estate for sports on TV: Sunday evening, early enough for dinner and late enough to stretch into primetime. The best ABC can do this weekend is Saturday night, as the F1 Miami GP will occupy the NBA’s traditional Sunday afternoon slot (ABC could have conceivably put an NBA game on after F1, if it was at all interested in disrupting its lower-rated Sunday night line-up of “America’s Funniest Home Videos” and “American Idol.”) In the two decades since ABC resumed airing the NBA, the network’s largest playoff audience prior to the Finals was 9.8 million. That record, set less than a week ago by Kings-Warriors Game 7, is presumably safe given the Saturday timeslot. Not counting the Finals or Christmas, the high mark for a Saturday night game on ABC is 8.7 million for Lakers-Nuggets in the 2009 conference finals. That is more likely to be in jeopardy.
NBA Playoffs, semifinal Game 3: Warriors-Lakers (8:30p Sat ABC). Prediction: 8.35M.
Do not be surprised when (not if) the Kentucky Derby gallops past LeBron vs. Steph
Some may be surprised when the ratings come out Tuesday and the Kentucky Derby comfortably outdraws Warriors-Lakers Game 3, but such an outcome should be expected. The Derby is traditionally one of the biggest draws in sports television, with viewership that has been on par with — or more recently, ahead of — NBA Finals and World Series. If Saturday’s “Run for the Roses” merely matches last year’s audience of 15.8 million, it will surpass every NBA and Major League Baseball game since 2019 and every game of this year’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
The Derby does have certain advantages; the “race segment” figure reported every year is for the hour or so surrounding the race, not the hours of pre-race coverage. It is far easier to sustain 16 million viewers over the course of one hour rather than three. Nonetheless, for all the annual discussion of horse racing being a sport of the past, expect the race to clear the rest of the weekend sports field by several lengths.
Kentucky Derby (post time 6:57p Sat NBC). Prediction: 15.0M.
Expect a Derby lead-in to give the USFL a reprieve
For the first time, the USFL gets the cushy post-Kentucky Derby timeslot that once belonged to the NHL (and many years ago, the NBA). Last season, NBC aired a USFL game immediately following the Preakness that averaged 1.2 million viewers — still the largest audience for any game of USFL 2.0 excluding the inaugural weekend. The Derby provides a much stronger lead-in than the Preakness, and with the USFL having the spring football audience to itself this weekend (the XFL has a bye week before next week’s championship game), a relatively large audience seems possible. The only complication is the presumably strong competition from ABC’s Warriors-Lakers NBA game, which could lure away some of the casual audience who might otherwise be curious (or just leave their televisions tuned to NBC). No matter what, expect the USFL to score its first seven-figure audience of the season.
USFL: Memphis-Michigan (7:30p Sat NBC). Prediction: 1.38M.
Hi everyone. Let’s pitch in ‘n get Kraken
In the playoffs for the first time in their two-year history, the Seattle Kraken could make a compelling argument as the biggest draw left in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Seattle’s Game 7 win over Colorado last week delivered the third-largest opening round audience ever on cable, and their first two games against Dallas delivered the second-and-third largest audiences of round two (with an admittedly small sample size of six games through Thursday). It goes without saying that their Sunday night Game 3 against Dallas will increase sharply over last year, when the comparable game window featured an all-Canadian matchup (Edmonton-Calgary) on ESPN2 (940K).
Stanley Cup Playoffs, semifinal Game 3: Stars-Kraken (9:30p Sun TBS). Prediction: 1.56M.
Additional predictions
NBA Playoffs, semifinal Game 3: Knicks-Heat (3:30p Sat ABC). Lead-ins are powerful, but so are lead-outs. It has no doubt helped Knicks-Heat to precede Warriors-Kings Game 7 and Lakers-Warriors Game 1. The series has no such help this weekend, airing in a standalone Saturday afternoon window that is as weak a timeslot as there is in the NBA Playoffs. How will Game 3 fare? In the same window last year, Celtics-Bucks drew 4.65 million. Prediction: 4.43M.
F1 Miami GP (3:25p Sun ABC). The Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix was an unqualified ratings success in year one, averaging 2.58 million viewers on ABC. With less novelty this year, it is reasonable to expect a viewership decline this time around. The real question is what range this event will eventually settle into. If viewership remains consistently around the two million mark, this race will become the jewel of the F1 season for American television. Prediction: 2.02M.
NBA Playoffs, semifinal Game 4: Celtics-Sixers (3:30p Sun ESPN). With ABC occupied by the F1 Miami GP, the NBA’s Sunday afternoon window this week goes to ESPN. Celtics-Sixers is one of the NBA’s most traditional playoff matchups and that alone is enough to move the needle. Game 2 — a 34-point Celtic rout — increased nearly a third from Sixers-Heat in the same window last year. It is safe to assume Game 4 will post a solid gain regardless of the margin. Suns-Mavericks Game 4 drew 4.36 million in the same window last year. Prediction: 5.03M.
Last week’s predictions
— NBA Playoffs: Warriors-Kings Game 7. Prediction: 10.01M; result: 9.84M
— NBA Playoffs: Heat-Knicks Game 1. Prediction: 4.63M; result: 5.38M
— Stanley Cup Playoffs: Panthers-Bruins Game 7. Prediction: 2.75M; result: 3.10M
— Stanley Cup Playoffs: Rangers-Devils Game 7. Prediction: 1.97M; result: 2.05M
— XFL Playoffs: Seattle-DC. Prediction: 901K; result: 478K
— USFL: New Jersey – Michigan. Prediction: 778K; result: 563K
