Yesterday, the startling news came that after more than 45 years of Buss family ownership, the Los Angeles Lakers would change hands at an eye-popping valuation of $10 billion.
How much incoming owner Mark Walter will actually fork over is unclear, as he is also the largest minority owner and may not have far to go to obtain control; still, it is likely billions of dollars.
Yet, with tonight being Game 6 of the NBA Finals, sure as the swallows return to Capistrano, in a few days will arrive a bevy of reports about the decline in the NBA championship ratings as if it is an area of serious concern for a league that just had the highest franchise sale agreement in sports history. Please. Enough already with the hyper focus on a few percent swing in linear TV ratings.
“Five to 10 percent ratings decline in any given season, whether locally or nationally, is really nothing to get too concerned about,” said Bob Thompson, a former Fox Sports executive. “Certainly, a 10 percent decline in ratings every year will, sooner or later, be problematic.”
Remember all the stories early in the NBA season about down TV ratings? Never mind, they came back up after Christmas, which, this isn’t a thunderbolt, is the traditional moment fans get serious about the season. The entire season was down just 2% over last year.
Outgoing NFL Chief Business Officer Brian Rolapp always used to smile when asked about ratings, and he isn’t a big smiler, at least not with the media. He would politely explain the league was not focused on the small swings up and down in TV ratings (note to golf writers, the new incoming top man at the PGA Tour will respond to TV ratings questions like this).
Mark Cuban, when he owned the Dallas Mavericks, often said he was befuddled by the media’s interest in sports TV ratings, as they are used to set ad rates and are therefore of concern to the advertising industry, not the broader public.
In some ways, it is understandable. In the broader business media, the stock market conveys winners and losers on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, and so forth basis. In political media, there are polls, elections, and Congressional votes to give a sense of who is up and who is down. In sports, there is performance on the field.
But on the business side of sports, there are fewer reliable weekly and seasonal metrics to gauge success in what are largely privately owned enterprises.
So TV ratings became the metric of choice for the outlets that cover this area. Obviously, I am not arguing for no TV ratings stories. It’s an essential fact that in 2023, 93 of the top 100 rated programs on television were NFL games. And certainly, when it comes to the Super Bowl and the NFL conference championships, there is interest in the viewership numbers (as there will be in the Thanksgiving Day game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Dallas Cowboys).
Back to the NBA Finals. Unlike the Super Bowl, the Finals ratings are very matchup-specific. If the New York Knicks had won the Eastern Conference final instead of the Indiana Pacers, the ratings would have been more robust. It was no secret that NBA Finals ratings would decline from the previous season, which featured a historic brand in the Boston Celtics and a team from a significant market in the Dallas Mavericks. It’s not news that the ratings are going to be down (if they were up, that would be a different matter).
The NBA last year signed 11-year deals worth $76 billion in media contracts, so it’s not exactly sweating a modest decline in Finals ratings in the last year of the old media deals. Do you think Walter, the incoming Lakers owner, cares?
“The Lakers’ sale price is indicative of the recently consummated deal for national NBA rights combined with their outsized local deal,” said Thompson. “Both deals have ten-plus years to run, which certainly helps justify the economics of the sale price.” It’s certainly not predicated on seasonal swings in ratings.
The entire focus on linear TV ratings overlooks streaming and social media interactions. The NBA has among the most tech-savvy fan bases, so traditional TV ratings only tell part of the story. This is likely a lost cause, railing against the TV rating coverage monolith. And there are significant trends to follow: how new leagues like the UFL and Unrivaled rate; the year-to-year trends, if not mid-season comparisons.
But the panic over week-by-week and game-by-game ratings when one of its teams was just valued at $10 billion? Please, no more.