The NBA All-Star Game made the most of its venue opportunity and, with 108,713 at Cowboys Stadium last Sunday, set an all-time record for basketball game attendance.
The new $1.6 billion US stadium was as big a star in the proceedings as were Lebron James and Kobe Bryant. The buzz around the stadium and its capacity to set the attendance record heightened media coverage in the U.S. and sponsorship activation hype around the NBA's fan festival in Arlington, Texas.
Expect more of the Mark Cuban-inspired outdoor NBA All-Star games in 2013 and beyond at places like Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Reliant Stadium in Houston and University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.
Those are the positives. The downside for the 2010 NBA All-Star game was a 4.4 cable rating with 6.9 million viewers of the game on TNT in the U.S., a television audience decline of 15.4 percent from last year’s 5.2 rating and 7.6 million viewers.
Yet no one should look at that drop in ratings as a reflection of long-term concern for the NBA and its All-Star format. The equally-iconic Daytona 500 had an even larger drop of 16 per cent over last year on FOX.
TNT and FOX had less people watching their sports properties last weekend because NBC -- and its cable platforms -- had more. That's because NBC is carrying the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games in the U.S. and every four years, competing networks programming in February have to grin and bear the television magnet that is the Winter Olympics.
More than 152 million Americans have watched at least some part of Vancouver 2010 in the first week of the Games on NBC's networks; the most since the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan drama drew millions of non-sports fans to Lillehammer 1994. Last night's figure skating gold drew an average American audience of 24.8 million and a cumulative tally of 77 million viewers -- both well higher than Turin 2006.
The night before, NBC rode Shaun White's snowboarding gold to knock off American Idol, scoring 12 million more viewers than the FOX juggernaut, which typically rules Wednesday nights in the U.S. Last Friday's opening ceremonies kicked things off big time for NBC with an average audience of 32.6 million in the U.S.
NBC has done well and will continue to drive strong ratings around Vancouver 2010 because (a) they are happening in the North American time zone; (b) they are effectively cross-promoting their coverage across multiple platforms and on all three screens; (c) the economy is keeping more people at home in front of their televisions; (d) as is the cold winter weather throughout much of the U.S.; and, most important, (e) American athletes are hot, off to a great start and the U.S. team tops the medal podium at the midway mark of the Games.
Nothing drives interest and national television audiences -- especially for Americans -- like success.
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