BOSTON -- The Boston Celtics' overtime win over the Miami Heat has drawn the highest preliminary television rating for an NBA playoff game on cable since records started being kept in 2003. Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals Sunday night on ESPN produced a 7.9 overnight rating. The network said Monday that was up 39 percent from Game 4 of the 2011 Western Conference finals on ESPN between the Mavericks and Thunder. In Boston, the game had a 20.7 rating, the highest on cable for an NBA playoff game in the market since records started being kept in 2003. Ratings represent the percentage of all homes with televisions tuned into a program. Overnight ratings measure the country's largest markets. According to ESPN, the game also set records on ESPN3 and WatchESPN. http://espn.go.com/nba/playoffs/201...ston-celtics-game-4-draws-record-cable-rating Wonder what ratings a game 7 would get. They should put it on ABC. That is one thing the NFL did right. It put its playoff games of free TV.
You misread the article. This is a rating for the OT game on Sunday, Game 4. Doesn't really mean anything, anyhow. This is just cable and not broadcast television records on ABC. Plus, records have only been kept since 2003, which is one of the worst eras for interest in playoffs. I'd like to know how it compares to the real records on ABC. They could easily compare the cable ratings to ABC (to give us a true measure). Maybe we can find that on the internet ourselves.
Yep..., or at least most of them. Most of the ones through the week, typically aired on TNT, but weekend, holiday games, and some Knicks and Bulls games would air on Friday night.
Great rating. Will be interesting to see how the Finals end up doing with ratings if Lebron isn't there. Helps to have a villain. By way of comparison...the 1998 NBA Finals were the most watched...they drew an 18.7 rating. From that point forward, NBA Final ratings never went above 12.1....that's post-Jordan era. Last year was a 10.2. They bottomed out at 6.2 in 2007, when the Spurs met the Cavs. I don't see it going that low again any time soon, frankly. Of course, the ratings are difficult to gauge over time because there's so many other channels today...so many other entertainment options.
And people also stream the games online or get video from their phone. Unless you want to follow the game completely, you cna do other things and still be in tuned.
absolutely true. that's true of almost every sporting event except the super bowl which is guarded like it's a national treasure....and where the ads are "sold" as part of the draw.
not so sure about that wrt these playoff ratings. During the playoffs all games are on basic cable and cannot be streamed in HD from NBA.com or any other source, except international subscribers, but they don't count in the ratings anyhow. I doubt the amount of people who stream from non-HD sources like frontrowsports have a TV to even count in these ratings...or they are at work, or whatever. I suppose we could say they would probably have cable if there was no internet, but at this point, they definitely have no other HD choice for the playoffs, if they cut their cable. That's why I'm waiting until after the Finals to cut my cable.
btw: HD is not really the issue. Just any TV-quality vs pirated streams. NBA does not offer broadband service for the playoffs.
he's talking about bootlegged streams, i think. it's pretty easy to find almost any sporting event you want online if you know where to look.
That's what I'm talking about. The bootlegged streams are nowhere close to TV-quality, and no one with cable would ever use one, since all the games are on cable (unlike regular season). Since we are talking about playoff ratings where all games are available to everywhere, people without cable probably wouldn't be in the ratings count anyhow...streaming or not.
Not to mention the games are WAYY more globalized now Players from all over the world are represented in the NBA, if D-Mo, and Jonas come to the NBA and dominate, then you will have many young kids in Lithuania trying to emulate them For all the crap i give Stern, he has done a GREAT job, at capitlizing on the NBA popularity overseas. Something that the NFL, and MLB still have trouble with Outside of America the NBA, is the number 1 "AMERICAN" sports league to most other countries
I think I have gone out to play basketball during almost every game in the playoffs; My love for the Rockets has made me apathetic about every other team. It was never like this before.
The NBA might be the number 1 sports league in the world period. EPL and some of the other soccer leagues are huge yes but the NBA is clearly better than the Euro League and Basketball might be more popular than soccer when you factor in how many people live in Asia and I am sure NBA is #1 by a long shot in India and China
