Ryen Russillo is preemptively tired of ratings talk surrounding an NBA Finals featuring two of the league’s tiniest markets.
In an appearance on Pardon My Take ahead of Game 1 between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Indiana Pacers, Russillo sought to address “disingenuous” arguments surrounding the league’s popularity and set the record straight on what the matchup truly means in the broader context of the league.
“The fact that it’s an OKC-Indiana matchup, the guys that are gonna be doing victory laps on all this, I already can name them all,” Russillo said.
Just this year, Russillo punched back at Clay Travis, an outspoken right-wing sports commentator who often argues declining NBA viewership comes from the league going “woke.”
“Ratings aren’t gonna be good,” he acknowledged. “I think a lot of the ratings decline stuff is driven by people’s political beliefs, where if you’re really, really right-wing, you love the idea of the NBA being a dying product because it’s probably the most progressive league.”
Hosts like Travis may just be using outdated metrics. Russillo said that in conversations he has with people in the entertainment industry, Nielsen ratings are less important than ever.
“What I don’t like are disingenuous arguments,” Russillo explained. “I would tell you people who are, like, in the TV game, the people making these decisions that I’ve talked to of investing in the live rights, they’re like, ‘Who the f*ck is using traditional ratings anymore?'”
Industry observers agree that viewership for this year’s Finals mostly matters to ESPN and ABC. The league has locked in a new, 11-year broadcast rights deal, in which just about every major network and platform reportedly had interest. The new collective bargaining agreement between the NBA and its players was designed to generate parity and matchups like Thunder-Pacers.
The NBA isn’t as competitive with the NFL or college football in terms of popularity right now, but its rating fluctuations are covered as a political news story far more than those of any other league.
“I defend what I think is, like, a reasoned way of looking at things,” Russillo added. “And I’m not trying to tell you, ‘Hey, it’s the NFL’ because that would be f*cking stupid of me to even try to do. But if the NHL dips or the MLB dips in ratings, nobody ever talks about how progressive they were as a league.”
Of course, all parties involved would love it if the biggest teams faced off in the championship every season. MLB was probably celebrating last season’s Yankees-Dodgers World Series as if it were the California Gold Rush.
Russillo instead focused on the effect of these Finals, which could be to reinforce the design of the CBA and encourage every team to compete.
“The NBA office would still rather this be Knicks-Lakers, who are we f*cking kidding,” Russillo said, “but if you’re an owner of any of these teams, you probably feel like you have more chance than you’ve ever had before with this version of the NBA.”
