Via Chris Lynch we see this stunning drop in viewership for the NBA championship:
Game 1 averaged only a 4.1 rating and 7.41 million viewers on ABC, “comfortably the lowest rated and least-watched NBA Finals game on record (dates back to 1988),” Sports Media Watch reported.
But if the league thought things might improve for Game 2, it had a bitter pill to swallow because the second in the series did even worse than the first.
Game 2 cratered with just 4.5 million viewers and a dismal 1. 9 in the ratings. This embarrassing showing was down 68 percent over Game 2 in 2019.
Emphasis added by me. But hey, at least we have good sportsmanship to watch, right? Wait, what?
[Lebron] James was seen leaving the floor with 10 seconds left and off to the side before the buzzer sounded and the game officially ended.
The NBA's TV contracts expire in 3 years.
13 comments:
They can just go ahead and move to China, and good riddance.
Old NFO, amen to that.
Works for me even though I have never watched the NBA, I won't see these people on TV screens at various restaurants while eating lunch. Hopefully.
They can do the same with the NFL.
Get woke, go broke.
They will never admit that is the cause, however.
The what?
Too many of these "professional athletes" act more like "professional crybabies" when things don't go their way.
So Lebron James lost a game. Even if it's a Finals game, there's no reason to leave the court until it's actually over -- effectively leaving his team short one man -- and plenty of reasons to stay. Even above and beyond esoteric anachronisms like "good sportsmanship", "respect", and "personal dignity", in his case there's 154 million of them over four years (his current contract value).
If I were the league or his team's owner, I'd be fining him a percentage of his contract's pay, equivalent to the percentage of the quarter remaining when he "abandoned his post". 10 seconds is about 1.4% of the quarter, which doesn't sound like much, but 1.4% of $154 million comes to a bit over $2 million. That sounds fair to me.
If he were in the military, and left his post before being properly relieved, he'd be court-martialed. If he were working a blue-collar job, and he walked out before his shift was over, he'd be disciplined and possibly fired. You can imagine the absolutely justified consequences if he were a surgeon and walked out of the OR half-way through stitching up the patient, or if he were an attorney and walked out of the courtroom half-way through closing arguments.
I don't see why being a "professional athlete" affords him special consideration when it comes to being required to do the job he has contractually agreed to do and for which he is being paid. And I don't see why he continues to be portrayed as a role model when this is the example he's putting forth.
Stopped watching the NFL in 2016. Just cancelled our NBA season tickets for 2021 after 12 years. God and Country first. Disrespect our country, flag, law enforcement and military and I’ll vote with my feet. Goodbye “professional” sports - forever!!
If the coach attempted to discipline LeBron, he'd be an ex-coach in about five minutes flat. Same thing in the NFL...can you imagine someone "taking plays off" (dogging it) in the Halas/Lombardi/Landry/Paul Brown/Allie Sherman era? You'd want to rent a hospital bed in advance.
The best thing I ever saw an NBA player do is reach into the overhead bin and retrieve something while sitting in his seat (first class) on the airplane. Nothing on the court ever matched it so I never got interested in the games. Nice I don't have to change my viewing habits.
The only thing I find moderately interesting about this whole situation is the apparent complete and utter disconnect as to why this is occurring. The players and perhaps the league may not care, but those that ultimately pay their salaries - the businesses that sell advertising - certainly do.
I feel for the small folks that worked across the entire professional sports circuit - ushers, food sellers, parking lot folks. Their lives have been made immeasurably worse by this.
Agreed.
There was no “stunning drop” in viewership. Any marketing guy could have seen this coming a mile away. The fans want a game, not ghetto soap operas and fake chitlib morality plays.
Here's hoping that the NBA will take down the networks that are stuck in uneconomic contracts before they self-destruct themselves.
Google the carreers of Skinhead O'Connor and the Pixie Twits after they forgot their raison d'etre and primary occupation, and made brief forays into politics.
Professional athletes having to sell siding and cars in the off-season again, coupled with ticket prices approaching hourly minimum wage, cannot be anything but good for America, and the sports leagues in general.
For that matter, if the NBA left most TV altogether, I wouldn't shed a single tear either, but I hardly watch the idiot box enough to notice as it is.
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