The commissioner’s job in the major American based sports is a lucrative one. It’s lucrative because it comes with great responsibility. It’s difficult on many fronts.
One of those fronts is that they work for the owners, yet need to keep the players happy, with great TV ratings always an end goal. TV broadcasting rights are the source of greater than 50% of the income that the leagues take in.
And in these “unprecedented, new normal, COVID-19 times” some of the other 50% isn’t ringing the cash register either. The turnstiles are silent, and, therefore the stands are empty. This makes TV ratings more important than ever.
So, it’s interesting that Adam Silver, NBA commish, and Roger Goodell, NFL commish, have taken the stances that they have with regards to the Black Lives Matter organization (and/or Movement) as well as the kneeling during the presentation of the flag and national anthem.
Ethan Strauss of The Athletic notes that the NBA ratings are coming in well under the pre-COVID break numbers. In Feb., before COVID hysteria shut the league down, Sports Business Daily reported that the league had seen a 12 percent loss in viewership compared to 2018-19. All of this is on top of a recent release of the numbers showing ABC’s NBA broadcasts in 2019-20 averaged 2.95 million viewers, down from its 5.42 million during 2011-12. That is a 45 percent drop off. Strauss also reported that TNT’s viewership is down 40 percent since the 2011-12 season, and ESPN has seen a decline of about 20 percent during the same time.
Other leagues are about breakeven comparing the now to the 2011-12 timeframe. It should be noted that live streaming, a growing segment of viewership after cutting the cable cord, isn’t included in any metrics.
The NBA Commissioner tried to dismiss the sliding ratings early this year. “I’m not concerned. In terms of every other key indicator that we look at that measures the popularity of the league, we’re up,” he told the Washington Post in December.
What to do, what to do?
Enter Roger Goodell. Goodell said that he wishes “we had listened earlier” to what Colin Kaepernick was trying to bring attention to when he began kneeling for the national anthem in 2016. He expressed remorse about the lack of dialogue with the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback, saying that the league would have benefited from a conversation with Kaepernick.
Goodell also said that players kneeling is “not about the flag” and that their intentions are being “mischaracterized.” He is entitled to his opinion. He may indeed be right. However, if NFL TV ratings tumble along the lines of the NBA’s he may be right in his characterization, but wrong for his league’s coiffures. Jerry Jones is holding (impatiently) on line three.
You would think that an America starved in 2020 for escape would be looking at the sports on TV in record numbers. Instead, they are masked and standing in long checkout lines at Home Depot.
Could it just be that the NBA season is very disjointed? It started. It stopped. It played a week or two of the regular season when it resumed. Now it’s in the first round of its playoffs. Or, could it be that a portion of America, bigger than the league is willing to admit, cut the cord in a very different way than described above?
Soon the NFL viewership will give us further insight. It dropped 10-15% a few years back when Kapernick knelt and wanted everyone to listen. It recovered that and then some through 2019.
But, 2020 always surprises us.
The next thing you know they’ll be two hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico at the same time for the first time since 1959.
Are you ready for some football?