While much of the conversation regarding the state of the regional sports networks is understandably doomstruck, the ardency with which fans continue to engage with their hometown should not be overlooked. Bankruptcy woes and the acceleration of cord-cutting may have cast a long shadow over the future of the RSN model, but the business of selling local sports has never been better.
The Nielsen ratings alone would suggest that live sports is weathering the slow-moving storm that is the transition from linear TV to the wilds of streaming, and the concomitant erosion in GRPs that are a function of the gradual shift from one screen to the next. On a local level, sports is stickier than ever; whereas regular-season NBA deliveries in 2022-23 inched down 1%—across TNT, ESPN and ABC, deliveries of the national telecasts averaged 1.59 million viewers, off from the year-ago 1.61 million—the RSNs in the same period managed to grow their pro hoops base.
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From the opening tipoff on Oct. 18 through the close of the regular season on April 9, local NBA deliveries were up 2% versus the year-ago campaign, giving the RSNs their highest turnout in five seasons. The NBA’s gains were solid across both extremes of the demographic spectrum, with the highly coveted adults 18-34 set improving 4% versus 2021-22, while fans in the 25-54 range also grew 4%.
In comparison to the national telecasts on the broadcast and cable networks, the NBA’s performance on the RSN level is particularly impressive. When weighted by market size and duration, the RSNs averaged 39,801 household impressions per NBA game, topping the deliveries for TNT (26,342) and ESPN (20,531). In other words, on an in-market basis, the local sports nets are drawing a larger crowd of NBA fans than are their much larger TV rivals.
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In some markets, the local RSN outdraws the in-market NBA coverage on TNT and ESPN by a factor of three. For instance, the Golden State Warriors this season averaged 132,286 households per game on NBC Sports Bay Area, eclipsing the 42,309 local households that tuned into TNT’s competitive coverage. (ESPN…
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