A lot of the state of Colorado can’t watch the defending NBA champion Denver Nuggets. Nonetheless, the remainder of America is having fun with the present. NBA insider/analyst Ethan Strauss dove into some viewership knowledge for a current publish on his substack.
He seemed on the viewership of ESPN and TNT televised video games and discovered that there’s loads of room within the American tv panorama for a small-market, non-NFL champion. The Nuggets are the one crew to file four games with two million or more viewers on these two networks. Last season, the NBA averaged 1.59 million viewers per nationwide televised recreation in keeping with Sports Media Watch data.
The 2023 NBA playoffs have been the very best rated in 5 years. Each Convention Finals did nice numbers, however there was purpose for concern in regards to the NBA’s premier occasion when each the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers did not advance. With a median of 11.64 million viewers, the 2023 NBA Finals was solely barely decrease than the 2022 sequence between the Celtics and Golden State Warriors — 12.4 million.
Comcast is the most important cable tv service supplier in Colorado. The Nuggets play on Altitude Sports activities Community — property of crew proprietor Kroenke Sports activities and Leisure which additionally owns the Colorado Avalanche, and household patriarch Stan owns the Los Angeles Rams. Comcast dropped Altitude from its service in 2019, and the 2 sides nonetheless haven’t been capable of negotiate a truce that permits the house fanbase to observe the crew. Even with their house market largely blacked out from the extremely entertaining broadcast crew of Chris Marlowe, Christopher Dempsey, Scott Hastings, and Katy Winge, the “small-market” Nuggets have turn out to be one of the crucial standard groups within the NBA.
Market dimension doesn’t all the time dictate curiosity. The Lakers, Dallas Cowboys, and New York Yankees will all the time reign supreme, however that doesn’t imply followers have solely sufficient bandwidth to care about these three franchises. I noticed loads of Orlando Magic Penny Hardaway jerseys throughout the 90s within the Chicago space. The seven-seconds-or-less Phoenix Suns have been one of the crucial polarizing groups in NBA historical past.
Thrilling gamers and groups will all the time draw eyeballs. Nikola Jokić hitting ridiculously high-arcing photographs and in addition spraying passess to Jamal Muray for 27-foot 3-pointers and Aaron Gordon for alley oops is super tv. The Nuggets have been entertaining for the reason that 2020 playoffs, however it took a while for the general public to heat as much as them.
Murray’s ACL harm in 2021 put their rise on ice for a few years. Regardless that Jokić received consecutive MVPs, with out its star guard the crew received one playoff recreation from the 2021 semi-finals to the 2022 first spherical. Throughout the 2023 playoffs, the sports activities world bought to see the Nuggets offense at full energy in opposition to Kevin Durant and LeBron James. With the postseason a little bit greater than a month away, Jokić & Co. will enter it as one of many hottest reveals on TV.
Just a little little bit of publicity can go a great distance. Being that the Nuggets are defending NBA Champions, they have been scheduled for 30 nationally televised video games within the 2023-24 — 22 excluding NBATV telecasts. That’s nonetheless 10 lower than the Lakers, and 11 fewer than the Warriors. Nonetheless, it’s the champs who’ve one of the best cable tv numbers.
Sadly, for the Nuggets house followers, greed has saved them from watching a defending championship season. As for the remainder of the nation, the individuals favored what they noticed late final spring and are prepared for extra.
