The NBA’s TV ratings are down this season.
Asked about that, NBA commissioner Adam Silver cited LeBron James leaving the Cavaliers for the Lakers.
Silver on Today:Face it, LeBron is one of the biggest stars in the world, and he also played in the East.
And so, the reason I look a little bit tired is a lot of our games are in the West, and it’s late at night. And I recognize most people choose to go to sleep at a reasonable time. And so, from a rating standpoint, not having LeBron in the playoffs, not having him in the East, has clearly impacted ratings.
Fifty percent of television households in this country are in the Eastern time zone. And so if your West Coast games start at 10:30 at night in the East, you’re invariably going to lose a lot of viewers around 11, 11:30. I mean, you can just chart it. You see how many television households turn off around 11:15, 11:30 at night, just because people have to get up for work in the morning.
I mean, it is something we can address. We’re talking about it. I mean, it would obviously be less convenient to those fans on the West Coast if we played even earlier. I mean, just think about people getting to those arenas after work if you start a game at 6 p.m. local time in the West. It’s not the most convenient thing. It’s not as convenient for a television watcher on the West coast, either. But when you look at the league from a national standpoint, it may make sense to play a little bit earlier in the West. And that’s something we’re going to talk to our teams about this summer.
There is no single reason ratings are down. As Silver also said, people – especially young people – watch less television through conventional methods.
Of course, the league still wants to maximize viewers in this new media landscape.
Determining start times is a delicate balance between appeasing home fans, road fans and a national audience. There’s no easy answer.
But this is why I’m against seeding the playoffs 1-16. That’d create more inter-time-zone games, not just in the playoffs but also in the regular season. The whole point of 1-16 seeding is increasing fairness in competition, which would be achieved only through balancing the regular-season schedule. Right now, teams play 52 games against their own conference and 30 against the other conference. A balanced schedule would mean more East Coast teams with late-starting games out West and more West Coast teams with early-starting games out East. That doesn’t serve fans of those teams.
So, the league should avoid those cross-time-zone games as much as reasonably possible.
Yet, some must still occur. The NBA is also trying to appeal to a national audience. So, every game has a cross-time-zone element.
People are concentrated in the Eastern time zone. That’s also where 13 of 30 NBA teams are located. And the league office.
No wonder people out West are the ones who might have to adjust.