NBC’s NBA Deal Costs More Than Its NFL Package. Yes, It Makes Sense.

A cross-conference collision between the Indianapolis Colts and Minnesota Vikings rarely lends itself to anything worth characterizing as a “rivalry,” but Sunday night’s meeting still managed to draw a crowd on NBC. According to Nielsen, 16.18 million viewers tuned in to the flagship broadcast, where the purple team prevailed by a score of 21-13.

While the game wasn’t terribly compelling, at least by NFL standards—led by 39-year-old QB Joe Flacco, the Colts’ offense only managed to convert on three of their 11 third-down situations and failed to book a single trip to the red zone—NBC’s deliveries still dwarfed the primetime competition. Flexed in after the previously scheduled Jaguars-Eagles outing was demoted to a 4:20 p.m. ET kickoff, the Vikings’ win came up shy of Sunday Night Football’s per-game average of 19.38 million linear-TV viewers, but even a middling NFL outing can make everything else on the tube look sick by comparison.

If a struggle between second-tier markets drew a somewhat less massive audience than NBC usually scares up on Sundays, the ratings were still downright enviable. Bear in mind that a sloppy Week 9 game that saw Sam Darnold turn the ball over three times (two picks and a strip sack that Indy ran back for six points) easily out-delivered the deciding frame of this summer’s NBA Finals. ABC’s coverage of the Celtics’ 106-88 clincher over the Mavericks averaged 12.22 million viewers on June 17, or 3.96 million impressions shy of our very forgettable midseason NFL game.

Of course, when there’s a more engaging matchup on tap, Sunday Night Football all but buries the NBA’s championship turnout. The Sept. 5 Ravens-Chiefs opener averaged 25.56 million TV viewers, or 29.16 million when streaming impressions are tossed into the TV mix, and the recent Cowboys-49ers broadcast served up another 24 million NBC + Peacock viewers. That’s about double what ABC hauled in for Game 5 of the NBA Finals. It’s the NFL’s world; the rest of us just live in it.

While we’re throwing numbers around, here are two more figures that are worthy of a little scrutiny. A couple…

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Author : Sportico

Publish date : 2024-11-08 10:55:00

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