What the NFL crushing the NBA on T.V. means for basketball fans ... eventually

Less success on television likely means less free access.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

---

At the Races; Edgar Degas; 1877-80

The NFL mollywhopped the NBA in T.V. ratings on Christmas Day.

This is not in any way a surprise: NFL ratings crushed NBA ratings last Christmas (which fell on a Sunday), and the NFL schedule looked mighty enticing in 2023, with major teams in every slot and what was dubbed a potential Super Bowl preview in primetime. As I implied in Sunday’s newsletter, the NBA Christmas slate didn’t really feature any “battles of the titans” in terms of team quality. The best match-up on paper (Sixers vs. Heat) saw both teams’ best players sit out.

Ethan Strauss has a smart analysis of why the NFL has so aggressively chased Christmas Day. ($) It’s related to how Nielsen counts people watching broadcasts in group settings, like bars, airports and parties. It’s become clear that this number can be an enormous boon for live sports and, I assume, award shows or other “event” broadcasts. The NFL saw enormous boosts to its Thanksgiving ratings as a result of the measurement change, took advantage of Christmas falling on the weekend the last couple years and decided to chase those numbers.

Here’s where it all gets funny to me: the NBA’s pre-eminent media partner is Disney, which owns ABC and ESPN. Disney has the rights to Monday Night Football. What did Disney do when Christmas fell on a Monday? They put fewer NBA games on ABC and watched their primetime NFL game (Ravens-Niners) destroy their primetime NBA games on ESPN (Sixers-Heat and Mavericks-Suns). The network most closely tied to the NBA took the unavoidable L and moved on.

In case you didn’t read the Sports Media Watch story linked at the top, this wasn’t like a few million more people watched the NFL over the NBA on Christmas. The average viewership against all games (three for the NFL, five for the NBA) was 10 times higher for the NFL. For every one person in America watching the NBA, 10 people in America were watching football.

Let’s put it another way. An estimated 17.2 million people watched the NBA on Christmas. In comparison, 29 million people watched Giants vs. Eagles on Monday afternoon. The Giants are 5-10 on the season and are only notable to a non-NFL person like me because their Italian-American QB is feuding with their social media manager (or something, I’m not an NFL person). Almost twice as many people watched that team face off against the Eagles than watched any of the five NBA games.

What does all of this mean for fans?