Year two of the NBA’s in-season tournament experiment, now known as the Emirates NBA Cup, is seeing a slightly diminished audience versus last year. But not all hope is lost.
According to Tom Friend of Sports Business Journal, citing Nielsen audience data, viewership for this year’s NBA Cup group stage has declined 10% year-over-year on ESPN and TNT. The average audience for nationally televised group stage games this season was 1.33 million viewers compared to 1.49 million viewers last season. Though including Tuesday’s knockout round games on TNT (a doubleheader featuring the Milwaukee Bucks and Orlando Magic, then the Oklahoma City Thunder and Dallas Mavericks), the year-over-year decline falls to just 6%.
There is some good news on the viewership front for the NBA Cup, however. Per Playfly Sports CEO Craig Sloan, ratings for local broadcasts of NBA Cup games are up 6% versus last year. “The 6% number across local broadcasts — when it’s that amount of games — that’s not a coincidence,” Sloan told SBJ.
As the SBJ report notes, the NBA Cup has gone up against some stiffer competition this year as compared to last. The World Series between the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers likely impacted viewership, as did the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul fight which competed head-to-head with the NBA Cup.
There’s a long way to go before the competition can be considered a success or failure. This is a long-term play for the league, which hopes to build up interest in the event over years and years of competition. The stakes do not get made overnight. And as viewers become accustomed to the NBA Cup as a normal part of the league’s regular season structure, growth may happen organically.
For now, it’s way too early to panic about minor declines.
