97-98 Bulls Documentary (The Last Dance)
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You can see what Jordan did for finals ratings in the 90s -- very good in the years the Bulls were in, bad 94-95, and then magnificent for The Last Dance.
Then they go to hell in a handbasket.
You can see the Lakers/Celtics rematch in 2010 kind of restarts things agin, but then it trails off again (even with Lebron in Miami playing on good teams for once).
The Warriors' dynasty (as either the protagonist or the antagonist against Lebron and whatever he had scraped together in the East) brings it back up again, so that is some windfall for the NBA, but even that is a temporary phenomenon. We really have never seen anything like it, at least in the data above during my lifetime.
You can see what Jordan did for finals ratings in the 90s -- very good in the years the Bulls were in, bad 94-95, and then magnificent for The Last Dance.
Then they go to hell in a handbasket.
You can see the Lakers/Celtics rematch in 2010 kind of restarts things agin, but then it trails off again (even with Lebron in Miami playing on good teams for once).
The Warriors' dynasty (as either the protagonist or the antagonist against Lebron and whatever he had scraped together in the East) brings it back up again, so that is some windfall for the NBA, but even that is a temporary phenomenon. We really have never seen anything like it, at least in the data above during my lifetime.
I think the only comparable thing is Tiger and golf. The total number of viewers can't compare to Jordan era NBA, but the % increase and decrease from when he was winning might have been even greater. Golf was REALLY not on the map for non-sports fans before Tiger. Without even looking I have to imagine the Masters ratings spiked with Tiger coming back and winning.
NBA Finals ratings are roughly 50% to 75% their Jordan era peak without him.
The 2018 Masters was the first one that Tiger had played in since the 2015 Masters. He did not make the cut that year. In 2013 (and probably the last one I watched even a little), Tiger finished tied for fourth but fell off Adam Scott and Ángel Cabrera, who settled it in a playoff. Then Tiger took 2014 off and ratings tanked, as you can see.
The drop looks actually somewhat more extreme than the post-MJ NBA drop. And that is not even accounting for what happened with Tiger in 2019.
The chart does not have the 2019 tournament when Tiger finally won another major, but according to my extensive Google searching...
It breaks the graph.
Except the graph is for Round 2 viewers (Friday, cable), whereas the 10.8M number is a Round 4 number (Sunday, network).
I would hesitate to use the 2019 Masters for anything but context in how big of historical event that was in sports. Anyone who pays attention to any sport was going to tune into the back nine and the final holes. It wasn't a golf event at that point as much as it was one of, if not the biggest finales to a comeback in sports history. It transcended golf and maybe even sport.
But yeah, Tiger and Jordan are probably the only people who have floated an entire organization by themselves. I'd say Tiger had a bigger effect on golf due to it's starting point and the fact he created 2 generations of golf viewers but I'm also one of them so I don't have the best perspective.
Tiger's main push of his career before and after is probably comparable in terms of moving the TV dial. Not the total #s the Bulls got, but a crazy % increase when he started and decrease when he left.
Agree last year's Masters was a separate thing.
I think UFC had a mini bump of that sort in that there were lots of fans that only watched Rhonda and/or Conor. I'm talking about casual fans. I'm not a casual NBA fan but a diehard, I am a casual UFC and golf.
Basketball is almost more like an individual sport when it comes to marketing.
That's true. I had a bunch of friends having the fights on when COnor was fighting and now I can't get them to come watch if I buy it.
I agree with you this is not a perfect apples-to-apples comparison.
But I have no doubt Sunday of the 2019 Masters smashed all the records.
Compare that to the NFL -- sure, guys like Peyton Manning and Tom Brady are important, but the league is already moving on from them to guys like Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, and Jimmy Garoppolo. I was worried there for a minute that the retirement of a lot of all-timer QBs (add in Brees and Favre to the recent list) would set them back, but they are easily manufacturing new QB stars for casual fans with aplomb right now.
The NFL loses a guy... just keeps on chugging. Once the NBA lost an MJ and golf lost a Tiger, those sports were completely different as business propositions.
To align with the graph, here are the Friday numbers from 2019:
https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2019/04/masters-ratings-friday-espn-tiger/
2.3 rating / 3.2M viewers
Down from 2018 (2.6 / 3.9M)
Seinfeld has the bit that nobody cheers for players, they cheer for the laundry. He's 100% right about Major League Baseball but he's pretty wrong about NBA basketball.
Yeah, I have made this argument (or a version of it) when it comes to players leaving early from college ball to the NFL/NBA and why it doesn't matter.
I don't care if 5* or high 4* recruits are playing for Iowa State specifically or college basketball generally. Even if ISU and CBB has lesser talents and athletes playing than in the past... I am not going to care. Very few of us on here would. We want the cardinal and gold to win, where everything fits into the professional ecosystem be forgotten.
This popped up on my recommended YT videos today and I remember watching this series when I was in HS and how funny I still find it today with all the games Rodman and Brickowski were playing against each other. Brickowksi was way out of his league thinking he could throw Rodman off his game, if anything it was a dumb strategy by George Karl to think provoking Rodman would rattle the Bulls. They made it way too obvious that was their strategy and I think both Rodman and even Phil just went with it and basically dared them to keep going at him because Rodman was smart enough to know what they were trying to do and probably enjoyed toying with them.
George Karl also didn’t think to put his best defender, Payton, on Jordan until Game 4. He just wasn’t a great coach.
