Despite what you are hearing from fake polling companies, people really don’t like millionaire athletes kneeling for the national anthem. The numbers have been abysmal, especially when you consider how sports starved the country is. Both baseball and basketball had a lot of BLM pandering during the first night back.
Those numbers were bad but after what went on in the first games, viewership dropped dramatically after that. On the first night back the Lakers-Clippers game drew 3.4 million and the Pelicans-Jazz game drew 2.1 million fans.
In baseball the Yankees-Nationals game, viewership was 4 million and the Dodgers-Giants drew 2.8 million.
On the second night, the drop was precipitous at:
MLB (last Friday, ESPN)
Mets-Braves (4p) – 922K
Brewers-Cubs(7p) – 1.0M
Angels-As (10p) – 797K
NBA (last night ESPN) (July 31)
Celtics-Bucks (6:30p) – 1.3M
Mavs-Rockets (9p)- 1.7M
MLB really fell off after opening day. In general, both leagues aren’t getting the audience one might expect from a nation that’s been deprived of entertainment for months https://t.co/GazeoR9SNB
— Ethan Strauss (@SherwoodStrauss) August 2, 2020
You could chalk sagging interest up to pandemic conditions, but 5.8 million tuned in to watch Tom Brady hit golf shots into the woods https://t.co/vIPxNc1uDi
— Ethan Strauss (@SherwoodStrauss) August 2, 2020
Both sports play second fiddle to golf. In a match with Tiger Woods, Peyton Manning, Phil Michelson and Tom Brady wiped both sports off the map.
As the NBA and MLB return from their coronavirus-imposed hiatus, it appears TV viewers are not interested in what the increasingly woke leagues have to offer.
With both baseball and basketball draped in all sorts of Black Lives Matter and social justice symbolism for their opening games, a substantially smaller number of fans tuned-in to the rest of the week’s games.
Indeed, the charity golf match earned record TV ratings in May.
Dubbed “The Match II,” the game featuring Tom Brady, Phil Mickelson, Peyton Manning, and Tiger Woods peaked at an amazing 6.3 million viewers and raised more than $20 million for charity.