The 2010 NBA Conference Finals could be a cable exclusive affair.
Sports Business Journal reports that ESPN is slated to air the entire 2010 Eastern Conference Finals. In previous years, ESPN sister network ABC has aired at least one game of the Conference Finals.
This would be the first time since 2004 that not a single game of the NBA Conference Finals has aired on broadcast television.
If none of the NBA’s second round series goes to a 7th game, ABC could still conceivably air Game 1 of the Conference Finals on a Sunday afternoon — as was done in ’07 (Jazz/Spurs Game 1), ’05 (Spurs/Suns Game 1) and ’03 (Nets/Pistons Game 1).
The move comes months after the NBA’s three television partners drew superb ratings during the Conference Finals. The Lakers/Nuggets and Magic/Cavaliers series averaged 8.6 million viewers, and included the 4 most-viewed NBA games ever on cable. Overall, ratings for the Conference Finals were the highest since ’02, when NBC carried the bulk of the games.
The strong numbers came despite only one of the games airing on ABC — and that game was only the 7th-most viewed of the round.
The ratings success, achieved largely without the aid of a broadcast television showcase, has evidently emboldened ESPN.
ESPN EVP of content John Skipper told Sports Business Journal that the “continuity” of having all the games on one network is “more important than the [household] differential” between ESPN (99 million homes) and ABC (114 million). Skipper: “We are going to clearly position that for sports, there is no significant differentiation between broadcast and cable.”
The numbers appear to back him up. Excluding the NBA Finals, ABC averaged 5.3 million viewers for the playoffs as a whole, not much higher than ESPN’s 4.9 million and TNT’s 4.7 million.
ABC’s lead looks even less impressive when one considers that the network only aired 10 playoff games prior to the Finals — and those 10 games were generally the highest-profile games of the day. Meanwhile, ESPN and TNT aired nearly all of the other playoff games — including series without much mainstream appeal like Magic/76ers or Rockets/Blazers.
Overall, ABC appears to be less and less of a priority for ESPN. The entire Bowl Championship Series will air on ESPN starting in 2011 — including the Rose Bowl, which had previously been an ABC staple. The signs were evident early in the college football season as well, when ESPN saved one of the biggest Saturday night games of the season for itself (USC/Ohio State) rather than air it on ABC’s Saturday Night Football.
And there’s the fact that ABC will air only 15 regular season NBA games this year, the bare minimum, and the fewest since 2002-03.
With this in mind, how long before the NBA Finals becomes a cable exclusive affair as well?
Source: Sports Business Journal
