Welcome back to “The Needle,” a new ratings-focused column on Sports Media Watch that will break down the numbers, attempt to put some context behind the data, and discuss broader trends in measurement and television viewing.
There is a general perception that sports leagues view television ratings as a top priority, but that is not always borne out in reality. Leagues sacrifice ratings all the time, most notably in media rights deals that put the biggest events behind any number of paywalls, from cable to streaming. Sometimes, they will do so even if there is no immediate monetary benefit.
One need only look at this weekend’s NBA playoff schedule, which for the first time in three years corresponds with Easter Sunday — a holiday associated with bigger-than-usual audiences in the out-of-home era. With both the Lakers and Warriors in the postseason field this year, the NBA had the opportunity to showcase its glamour teams on broadcast television on a day associated with greater communal viewing, and opted to include neither on ABC’s schedule. Instead, the Lakers play on ABC Saturday night and the Warriors play on TNT Sunday night.
What would possess the league to pass up such a golden opportunity? The desire to showcase the league-leading Oklahoma City Thunder, a title favorite from the nation’s #47 market (potentially facing #51 market Memphis). The league made a conscious decision to feature the Thunder on ABC this weekend, knowing that doing so — instead of airing Stephen Curry’s first playoff game in two years — would mean sacrificing viewership.
(ABC theoretically could still have carried both the Thunder and Warriors-Rockets on Sunday, but instead will carry Magic-Celtics in its second window.)
Given the Easter out-of-home effect, which figures to only be heightened now that Nielsen has expanded its out-of-home measurement to 100 percent of markets, it is likely that a Warriors-Rockets game would have delivered the league’s largest Opening Weekend playoff audience since the current media rights deal began in 2002. The current number is 6.90 million for Nets-Celtics in 2022, the last time the opening weekend coincided with Easter. Keep in mind that was a high-profile series — even though it ended up in a sweep — featuring a Brooklyn “Super Team” and Kyrie Irving’s always-bitter return to Boston. Curry and the Warriors could easily eclipse that bar, but Magic-Celtics is far less likely.
To be sure, the league’s motivations are not entirely altruistic. It is in the best interest of the NBA to acquaint a national audience with an Oklahoma City team that is young, formidable and stacked with future draft picks. The old LeBron James refrain “not one, not two, not three …” could actually be true of the Thunder. Better for all involved that they do not arrive on ABC screens the first Thursday of June with most viewers entirely unaware of who they are.
The ABC games should still do well, and surpass last year, thanks to the Easter effect. (Last year’s NCAA men’s and women’s regional finals both hit highs on Easter Sunday, and the Masters delivered its largest audience since 2018 — until this year — on Easter two years ago.) Plus, TNT figures to deliver one of its largest-ever first round audiences for Warriors-Rockets. Even so, Warriors-Rockets on ABC would likely have been a lock as the most-watched first round opener in 23 years, the kind of superlative that is made for PR.
If anyone ever wanted proof that ratings are not a league’s sole consideration, the NBA passing up one of its glamour teams and biggest stars should be an indication.
The scheduling is just the latest evidence that the NBA does not view its television ratings as a particularly pressing issue. At the start of the regular season, when its double-digit declines in viewership were the talk of the industry, the viewpoint within the league was that the numbers would take care of themselves over the course of a long season. That they did, with viewership rebounding enough that the final regular season average was down just 2 percent (down 5 percent including NBA TV), in line with the NFL (-2%), men’s college basketball (-7%) and college football (-8%).
To be sure, a decline is a decline — and the regular season was still the least-watched in four years — but neither the numbers nor the league’s actions correspond with the prevailing view that the sky is falling.
It is perhaps easier to take a pragmatic approach to television ratings when one is mere months away from the start of a $77 billion media rights deal that includes a dramatically increased presence on broadcast television. (Next season, a Sunday night Warriors-Rockets playoff game would presumably air on NBC rather than TNT.)
Whatever the reason, it seems apparent that if the NBA’s ratings are a top priority for outside observers, that concern is not shared by the league itself.
Did the Four Nations Face-Off boost the NHL?
With the NHL regular season now over, it is as good a time as any to review the impact of the Four Nations Face-Off, the unexpected ratings hit that was the talk of midseason. Did the ratings bonanza of international competition lift the league?
As of earlier this week, viewership for the post-Four Nations portion of the season was up five percent from the first half of the season. By comparison, NBA viewership was up 16 percent after its trade deadline, which occurred roughly around the same time as the Four Nations event. (The NHL had no Luka Doncic trade, of course).
Yet that five percent increase looks fairly impressive when one considers the fact that most of the league’s glamour teams flopped in surprising fashion this season. The Bruins and Rangers both missed the playoffs after long stretches of contending, the Blackhawks continue to flounder and the Red Wings have yet to return to form. As traditional powers, those teams were also regulars on the national television schedule. Several games down the stretch thus featured teams who were either out of, or on the margins of, the playoff race — and the final weeks of the season brought unusually low numbers to ABC, ESPN and TNT.
Given that context, a five percent bump for the second half is better than one might ordinarily expect.
Can any of that be attributed to Four Nations? Realistically, to attribute greater viewership to a one-off international event would require a more unambiguous data point. One could argue that the Four Nations momentum contributed to ESPN’s unexpectedly strong Stadium Series audience in March, but by the time of Alex Ovechkin’s record-setting goal two weeks ago, were any viewers really watching because of a Canada-United States game from several months ago? It seems more likely that Nielsen’s expansion of out-of-home viewing played a greater role.
A full recap of NHL regular season viewership is coming soon.
Plus: Masters, Caitlin Clark, Frozen Four
Any discussion of recent Masters viewership is usually accompanied by some level of surprise that Tiger Woods’ 2019 win does not rank higher. With just 10.8 million viewers, Woods’ win trails not only Rory McIlroy’s stirring victory this year — which averaged nearly 13 million — but Jon Rahm’s Easter-fueled 2023 win as well. Remember that not only did Woods’ win air in a special early morning window due to inclement weather, it was also the final Masters before Nielsen began including out-of-home viewing in its estimates.
Looking solely at the household rating — which by definition does not include out-of-home viewing — Woods’ victory averaged a higher rating (6.9) than any subsequent year. McIlroy’s win on Sunday was the highest rated since, averaging a 6.2 (+18% from last year). All things being equal, had out-of-home viewing been measured in 2019 the way that it is today, Woods’ win probably would have exceeded 14 million (to say nothing of what the audience would have been had it aired in the usual timeslot).
The Caitlin Clark effect continues to pay dividends for women’s basketball, as last week’s WNBA Draft delivered its second-largest audience on record — 1.25 million viewers. That is a massive decline of nearly 50 percent from last year (when Clark was selected first overall) and a massive increase of more than 50 percent from two years ago (before Clark entered the league). Nothing compares to her impact on the ratings when she is actually present, but viewership in her absence is quite clearly improved over the previous status quo.
Last Saturday’s NCAA men’s hockey national championship averaged 594,000 viewers on ESPN2, trailing only two years ago as the largest audience for the event since 2018. By comparison, ABC’s two primetime NHL games this season — which faced competition from the NCAA men’s basketball tournament — averaged 604,000 (Devils-Penguins) and 687,000 (Red Wings-Golden Knights). It seems fairly likely that the title game could have fared about as well had it aired on ABC, but realistically, an audience in the 500K or 600K range on a slow night is not going to be a compelling argument for this event to move up to broadcast television.
(ABC, it should be noted, averaged 2.62 million for the primetime portion of “The Ten Commandments” — and even had a higher rating in adults 18-49 than the hockey game, 0.18 to 0.16.)
