Surprise! NBA All Star Game Ratings Were Way Down
One of the original thoughts of 2020 was that sports TV ratings would be good, since people were stuck inside and had nothing better to do during the pandemic.
That turned out to be false. The total opposite was true, with the World Series, Super Bowl, and NBA and NHL finals all taking a dip in the viewership department.
Add the NBA All Star game to the list:
Final deliveries for the Oprah/royals thing on CBS: 17.8M viewers & a 3.8 in the core news demo, which works out to ~4.61M adults 25-54. The interview stands as the 19th most-watched broadcast of 2021, resting between ESPN's CFP Championship (18.7M) & Week 17 of NBC's SNF (16.5M)
— Anthony Crupi (@crupicrupicrupi) March 9, 2021
One of the things you’ll see online is that a take that goes like this:
“More people care about Meghan and Harry than the NBA.”
Not necessarily true. One of those programs was on CBS, while the other was on cable. And those events draw completely different audiences, so if you’re somebody who was interested in both the Oprah interview and the All Star Game, congratulations on being part of a very unique group.
Crupi points out in another tweet that the All Star Game did win in the A18-34 category, which means all viewers ages 18 to 34. It was 240,000 people better than the Royals interview among younger people, which shows how the NBA skews to a different demographic, similar to MLS. The Harry/Meghan thing did crazy numbers with folks 50+.
Also, that 1993 NBA All Star Game, which drew the record numbers? The rosters were stacked. Check out the starting lineups:
West: John Stockton, Clyde Drexler, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, David Robinson
East: Isiah Thomas, Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Larry Johnson, Shaq
Killer.