NBA games on ABC, ESPN, and TNT are down 19% so far this season to average 1.4 million Nielsen-measured viewers -- and off 25% including NBA TV channel coverage.
Perhaps all this has some of the same effect for men’s and women’s college basketball down 21% and 38%, respectively.
MediaPost reports, to be fair, these sports franchises are in their early seasonal periods -- very typical for NBA and college basketball fans in yielding lower levels of interest compared to those games closer to the NBA playoff period starting in late spring and the NCAA “March Madness” Tournament.
While the NBC Cup -- a month-long event (this year, November 12-December 17) -- did spike up TV interest a year ago, it moved lower this time around. The Milwaukee Bucks-Oklahoma Thunder NBA Cup Finals were down 35% versus a year ago to 2.99 million viewers on ABC.
College football, which is somewhat of an outlier, is holding its own, however -- down by single-digit percentages in overall TV network/streaming viewing. And NHL viewing is down as well.
Can we make anything of this? Is this a result of the long-term effects of cord-cutting?
Perhaps the the overabundance of program content everywhere is having some supply-and-demand effect.
Also consider the stronger effect that NFL competition has on these sports when programming runs head to head.
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