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Lakers are falling in standings and in television ratings
Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 12:05 pm
by leeprettyp
http://www.latimes.com/sports/basketball/nba/lakers/la-sp-lakers-clippers-tv-20140130,0,762260.story#axzz2rrD96RFLThe Lakers' ratings on Time Warner Cable SportsNet are down 37.5% over the team's first 40 games compared to last season.
Lakers games averaged a 2.72 rating over those games, down from a 4.35 last season, TWC's first as the team's broadcast partner.
"I wouldn't be overly concerned about it, but I certainly would keep an eye on it," said David Carter, executive director of the USC Sports Business Institute. "That kind of precipitous drop, if it becomes something where they have that drop and then they never recover from it, that's certainly a real problem."
"Although the TWC ratings are down, we know that Lakers fans continue to have an appetite for Lakers programming, be it live games, classic games or original programming," Lakers spokesman John Black said. "We've seen similar ratings patterns in past Lakers seasons, and while we do see a dip this season, my understanding is that we're still outperforming the marketplace.
"We all know that we can't be championship contenders every year, but there is still an enormous base of Lakers fans who are following this team."
The Lakers' struggles have resulted in the team's first non-sellout at Staples Center since December 2006 and prompted ESPN and TNT, in consultation with the NBA, to each drop a Lakers game they had planned to nationally televise earlier this month.
"We've always felt like the Lakers had tremendous goodwill and the equity in the bank that continues to draw the fans in season in, season out, win or lose," said Paul Swangard, managing director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon, "so it's interesting where this year everything has seemingly gone wrong how much of an eyeball exodus there has been from the TV product."
TWC executives obviously were hoping for higher ratings when they agreed to a 25-year, $5-billion deal with the Lakers that has made the team the envy of small-market competitors. Forbes recently reported that the Lakers' $122-million take last season from TWC represented more than 20 times what the Charlotte Bobcats and Milwaukee Bucks received from their broadcast partners.
It's been even obvious here on our Lakers board... Our game threads only make like 5 pages at most now
. You guys really think management will have a choice this off-season and not making any significant roster moves? In reality they may not have a choice but that'll be a tough pill to swallow for everyone. (TWC and Lakers fan). Gotta believe somewhere Fox Sports West is laughing at Time Warner cable. Kobe being out obviously had a big part in this number. Also surprising how low the Clippers #'s are.
Re: Lakers are falling in standings and in television rating
Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 12:23 pm
by ROballer
Not suprising at all....last year we had Kobe/Howard/Nash playing
This year we have Marshall/Meeks/Kelly
We'll bounce back next yr....people will want to see a hungry Kobe 100% healthy and the high pick (at the very least,we might add somebody through FA)....heck,I'm talking from my perspective since even I haven't watched that many games live this year,considering I have to wake up at pedestrian hours every day
That will change next year for sure
Re: Lakers are falling in standings and in television rating
Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 12:26 pm
by Dr Aki
well, we obviously werent going to top the charts in a down year
Re: Lakers are falling in standings and in television rating
Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 12:56 pm
by chefy
Well we suck right now so it's not a surprise. You can see it on this board too. Look at the game threads, before we probably used to average 300+ posts/replies in our game threads, now we're lucky if we hit 100 lol. That's why I'm not totally against teams that are tanking tbh, to me it's a strategy that involves sacrifices too. And if all the teams in the league are doing it/have done it/will do it, why can't we?
And also I think the TWC deal is gonna be bad for the Lakers in the long run, I think they lost some fans because of it. The team is becoming more and more expensive for the fans imo, tickets are expensive and now you have to pay extra too to watch the lakers on tv.
Re: Lakers are falling in standings and in television rating
Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 2:12 pm
by dockingsched
this is why kobe got that extension. basketball wise the extension was head scratching at best, but business wise it was an easy call.
lakers need kobe to keep the ratings up and keep attendance high while they take a couple of years to get their ducks in a row and build a true contender post-kobe.
Re: Lakers are falling in standings and in television rating
Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 3:03 pm
by The Skyhook
I really hope this doesn't pressure the Lakers to waste the cap space they have to keep TWC happy. If the Lakers had a plan going into the future I hope they stick to it. Even if you have no shot of signing LeBron in free agency, the Lakers really have nothing to lose by trying to go after him. If you can get LeBron then I think the best choice is to stand pat. I think Melo would cripple us and even though it would bring up viewership it wouldn't make the Lakers legit contenders.
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Re: Lakers are falling in standings and in television rating
Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 4:20 pm
by NCHeels2008
it's a 25 year deal, TWC doesn't exactly have a lot of leverage at this point.
Re: Lakers are falling in standings and in television rating
Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 10:38 pm
by Rox_Nix_Nox
Good I hate time warner cable sportshiet
or soon to be charter sportshiet
Re: Lakers are falling in standings and in television rating
Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 11:12 pm
by leeprettyp
NCHeels2008 wrote:it's a 25 year deal, TWC doesn't exactly have a lot of leverage at this point.
I believe they're are certain stipulations in the contract that the Lakers have to meet. One of the bigger ones being they have to give money back to TWC every season we don't make the playoffs.
Re: Lakers are falling in standings and in television rating
Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 11:20 pm
by Wavy Q
breaking news, a large % of lakers fans are fairweather.
Re: Lakers are falling in standings and in television rating
Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 11:24 pm
by BEazy
I'm still watching. Even if I have to watch streams. It's sad that many fans that live in LA have 24/7 access to Lakers channel and don't utilize it. I'd be watching that **** 24/7 for sure.
Re: Lakers are falling in standings and in television rating
Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 11:47 pm
by Danny Darko
tune and marvel at a 7ft rookie who makes Andre Bargnani look like a good rebounder!
Re: Lakers are falling in standings and in television rating
Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 11:54 pm
by The Laker Kid
Karma for TWC not working with Dish Network
Re: Lakers are falling in standings and in television rating
Posted: Fri Jan 31, 2014 3:28 am
by gotokyo
ScHoolBoy B wrote:I'm still watching. Even if I have to watch streams. It's sad that many fans that live in LA have 24/7 access to Lakers channel and don't utilize it. I'd be watching that **** 24/7 for sure.
You'd be spending a lot of time watching a whole lot of crap that has nothing to do with the lakers then.
At least 50% of the programming on that channel has nothing to do with the lakers, or basketball at all for that matter. It's a lot of soccer games, poker games, action sports contests (surfing, skating, bmxing) local d3 college and high school basketball games, and other random crap here and there. Then the stuff that is Lakers content is mostly old reruns of their pre and post game shows.
Backstage Lakers would have been pretty cool to watch but they completely **** it up with overly dramatic narrating and editing and it's absolutely unbearable to watch. It's just **** basketball and their trying to make it seem like a regular season game against the hawks has the same dramatic equivalency to a veteran's surprise visit home to see his family for the first time after being deployed for 4 years.
/rant.
Re: Lakers are falling in standings and in television rating
Posted: Fri Jan 31, 2014 3:42 am
by SniperHawk10
ScHoolBoy B wrote:I'm still watching. Even if I have to watch streams. It's sad that many fans that live in LA have 24/7 access to Lakers channel and don't utilize it. I'd be watching that **** 24/7 for sure.
I agree with this. Being from Toronto, I have to live stream most laker games (I haven't watched too many games this year).
I think having that channel would be pretty cool, even if it's not all lakers all the time. I'm not a fan of NBA TV Canada.
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Re: Lakers are falling in standings and in television rating
Posted: Fri Jan 31, 2014 5:43 am
by Speedlot
No kobe no ratings. Sahprise.
Meh, we'll be fine in the long run i think