NBA Christmas Day Ratings Huge, Ensuring Complaints From Future Phil Jacksons
The ratings from the NBA’s slate of five Christmas Day games are in and ... well, of course the matches did huge ratings.
ABC's doubleheader -- Celtics-Magic followed by Heat-Lakers -- earned a 5.5 rating, beating last year's Celtics-Magic and Cavs-Lakers double-header by about 40 percent. All the main parts were the same (given that LeBron James was Cleveland's entire draw a year ago), but ratings have boomed.
According to an ABC/ESPN press release, the Heat’s 16-point blow-out of the two-time defending champion Lakers did a 6.4 rating, the NBA’s best regular season mark since the 2004 of Heat-Lakers on Christmas. (That edition featured Shaquille O’Neal in his first game against the Lakers, who he’d just been traded by.)
Ratings like this are huge for the NBA, as they not only deliver better ad revenue for ABC’s family of networks and wider publicity and word-of-mouth hype going forward, but they ensure that the league’s Christmas blockbuster remains a huge draw as David Stern’s team negotiates future TV deals. (The current deal with ABC, ESPN and TNT runs through 2015-16. The NBA makes almost $1 billion annually in TV revenue.)
This is what Phil Jackson and the defenders of Christmas sanctity are up against: lots and lots of money, lots and lots of eyeballs. Big events like the NBA on Christmas Day help subsidize Phil's multi-million dollar salary. It shouldn't be so easy to forget that.
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