konex
04-14-2016, 12:19 PM
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/real-winner-of-big-nba-night-not-kobe-bryant-farewell-or-curry-warriors-record-espn-144701843.html#
But the biggest winner of the night was ESPN (DIS), which was lucky to have both games on its channels. The Warriors game, on ESPN, scored a 2.6 overnight rating, making it the highest-rated NBA regular-season game on ESPN (except for Christmas Day games) since 2014. (Regular season NBA games typically score a 1.3 overnight rating on ESPN.) Even more impressive: the Lakers game, on ESPN2, notched a 2.6 overnight rating, making it the highest-rated NBA regular-season game ever on ESPN2.
Both games also set regular-season records for viewers on WatchESPN, the company's streaming platform. Bryant and the Lakers: 134,000. Curry and the Warriors: 111,000.
It was surprising that the Lakers game came very close to drawing more viewers than the Warriors game, because there is typically a big disparity between viewership on ESPN2 and ESPN. It's a sign of Kobe Bryant's power. And it might leave many wondering whether ESPN should have put the Lakers game on ESPN, rather than bumping it to ESPN2 (it was the first NBA game shown on ESPN2 this season) for the Warriors game. ESPN declined to comment on the programming decision.
Wednesday's dueling games left basketball fans with a dilemma. While ticket prices were almost twice as high for the Lakers game, television ratings were expected to be much higher for the Warriors game. Instead, Bryant put on a show and made the Lakers game the more exciting match, helping ESPN2 almost beat ESPN. And Bryant's farewell was the clear winner on social media, at one point causing a brief Twitter outage as well as bringing down the official Los Angeles Lakers account due to an overload
But the biggest winner of the night was ESPN (DIS), which was lucky to have both games on its channels. The Warriors game, on ESPN, scored a 2.6 overnight rating, making it the highest-rated NBA regular-season game on ESPN (except for Christmas Day games) since 2014. (Regular season NBA games typically score a 1.3 overnight rating on ESPN.) Even more impressive: the Lakers game, on ESPN2, notched a 2.6 overnight rating, making it the highest-rated NBA regular-season game ever on ESPN2.
Both games also set regular-season records for viewers on WatchESPN, the company's streaming platform. Bryant and the Lakers: 134,000. Curry and the Warriors: 111,000.
It was surprising that the Lakers game came very close to drawing more viewers than the Warriors game, because there is typically a big disparity between viewership on ESPN2 and ESPN. It's a sign of Kobe Bryant's power. And it might leave many wondering whether ESPN should have put the Lakers game on ESPN, rather than bumping it to ESPN2 (it was the first NBA game shown on ESPN2 this season) for the Warriors game. ESPN declined to comment on the programming decision.
Wednesday's dueling games left basketball fans with a dilemma. While ticket prices were almost twice as high for the Lakers game, television ratings were expected to be much higher for the Warriors game. Instead, Bryant put on a show and made the Lakers game the more exciting match, helping ESPN2 almost beat ESPN. And Bryant's farewell was the clear winner on social media, at one point causing a brief Twitter outage as well as bringing down the official Los Angeles Lakers account due to an overload