One of the knocks against LeBron James early in his career was that despite all the hype, he wasn’t a big draw on TV. I guess all it took was a good team around him to change that because the Cavs posted the best local TV ratings the NBA had seen in a decade. According to Sports Business Journal, which has all the local numbers for every team in the league, the Cavs garnered an 8.76 average rating which translates to 134,000 homes in Cleveland. The Lakers were the only team to appear in more homes, averaging 250,000 homes per game. The Lakers earned a 4.43 share ranking them fourth behind the Cavs, Jazz, and Spurs.
The Hornets (64.7%), Hawks (38.6%), Heat (32.7%) and Blazers (29.4%) all enjoyed the greatest growth in ratings this year. The Kings (-40.6%), Warriors (-39.8%), Suns (-37.9%), Mavericks (-30.1%), Pistons (-20.6%), and Nuggets (-19.4%) all saw the largest drops in ratings. When you think about things, everything here makes sense; teams that had big dropoffs from previous years had poor ratings (with the exception of the Nuggets) and teams that improved saw their ratings correspondingly ascend.
Oh yeah, the Clippers (0.51%), Nets (0.52%), and Bobcats (0.56%) brought up the rear. Matter of fact, Bobcats were sadly only seen in an average of 6,000 homes a game. But if you want to know everything you need to know about the NBA, here it is: the Knicks with only a 1.18 rating still had almost double as many homes watching than the Jazz which had ratings almost five times higher. Unfortunately it’s all about the big markets. I’m glad that the Cavs and other teams are doing well locally — that’s a good sign for our business. Shows that the NBA still is a big ticket in some cities.
