A lot of the state of Colorado can’t watch the defending NBA champion Denver Nuggets. Nevertheless, the remainder of America is having fun with the present. NBA insider/analyst Ethan Strauss dove into some viewership information for a current submit on his substack.
He regarded on the viewership of ESPN and TNT televised video games and came upon that there’s loads of room within the American tv panorama for a small-market, non-NFL champion. The Nuggets are the one staff to file 4 video games with two million or extra viewers on these two networks. Final season, the NBA averaged 1.59 million viewers per nationwide televised sport in keeping with Sports activities Media Watch information.
The 2023 NBA playoffs had been the very best rated in 5 years. Each Convention Finals did nice numbers, however there was motive for concern concerning the NBA’s premier occasion when each the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers did not advance. With a mean 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 biggest cable tv service supplier in Colorado. The Nuggets play on Altitude Sports activities Community — property of staff 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 in a position to negotiate a truce that enables the house fanbase to observe the staff. Even with their residence market largely blacked out from the extremely entertaining broadcast staff of Chris Marlowe, Christopher Dempsey, Scott Hastings, and Katy Winge, the “small-market” Nuggets have change into one of the vital standard groups within the NBA.
Market measurement doesn’t at all times dictate curiosity. The Lakers, Dallas Cowboys, and New York Yankees will at all times 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 through the 90s within the Chicago space. The seven-seconds-or-less Phoenix Suns had been one of the vital polarizing groups in NBA historical past.
Thrilling gamers and groups will at all times draw eyeballs. Nikola Jokić hitting ridiculously high-arcing pictures and likewise 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 damage in 2021 put their rise on ice for a few years. Though Jokić received consecutive MVPs, with out its star guard the staff received one playoff sport from the 2021 semi-finals to the 2022 first spherical. Through the 2023 playoffs, the sports activities world acquired to see the Nuggets offense at full power towards Kevin Durant and LeBron James. With the postseason slightly greater than a month away, Jokić & Co. will enter it as one of many hottest exhibits on TV.
A bit of little bit of publicity can go a good distance. Being that the Nuggets are defending NBA Champions, they had 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. Nevertheless, it’s the champs who’ve the perfect cable tv numbers.
Sadly, for the Nuggets residence followers, greed has saved them from watching a defending championship season. As for the remainder of the nation, the folks preferred what they noticed late final spring and are prepared for extra.
