2 things
1. Ratings don’t truly capture the pulse anymore of what viewers are watching , illegal streams for sports and things like Netflix have completely changed the game. It’s like how we don’t look at album sales anymore, it’s all streaming projections and shyt (which is still flawed but atleast it’s something). The TV ratings business hasn’t quite caught up to measuring that.
2. The decision Silver has made to make the NBA the social activist league has turned some viewers off no doubt. They’re hoping to take the short term hit (pissing off older whites) with the long term benefit (attracting more young gen X viewers). With that said, sometimes people just wanna crack open a beer and watch the game, politics and sports is a tricky topic. Now what the NBA is hoping is that this blip in ratings in only temporary and that in a few years, ratings will be back to usual levels. We’ll just have to see.
All in all 12.8 M average for an NBA finals between 2 of the most popular markets is mid as hell, but the shares for each game weren’t so bad so it might not be as bleak as the raw numbers show. I can only imagine how much worse these would be if it was Bucks vs Suns or some shyt.
The last Finals that truly captured Americas attention was Cavs Warriors 2016.
