Super Bowl

by Erich Heinlein

Created on: February 17, 2010   Last Updated: February 20, 2010

 When comparing the NBA Finals and the Super Bowl there are some categories the NBA can't compete with. Even a lot of non sports fans watch the Super Bowl and like the commercials just as much as the game itself. In addition, there is also a concert at halftime of the Super Bowl. None of this can be said of the NBA Finals.

It is widely known that the companies which carry advertisements during the Super Bowl pay premium dollar to get even minimal airtime on Super Bowl coverage. It is the equivalent of getting nosebleed seats at Yankee Stadium. It is considered "cool" to be there but even to watch the game from a ways up you have to pay a lot of money. What's not being suggested is the ads during the NBA Finals are cheap. They just aren't considered as popular generally.

The other problem with the NBA Finals is it goes anywhere from four to seven games and it can go from one to two weeks depending on how long it takes for one team to get to four games.. On the other hand the Super Bowl is one game, one night and then that is it. People get together with friends and family all over the country to watch the Super Bowl. While it does to an extent with the NBA Finals it just does not happen as much. The Super Bowl is so big, that in a matter of fact it is considered a big payday for local grocers, drug stores and Walmart. Again, something which does not happen during the NBA Finals. During this year's Super Bowl, according to the Nielson Media Web Site 106,476,000 people or 45 percent of America watched it. When looking the viewer ship for the NBA Finals, at no time in the last 33 years has it come close.

The smallest viewer ship rating in the last 30 years  for the NBA Finals was the Celtics-Rockets series during the 1981 finals and the highest was only 18.7 percent and that was during the Micheal Jordan era when the Bulls beat the Jazz in the 1998 NBA Finals. Even the Celtics-Lakers rematch in 2008, which is the NBA's equivalent to Red Sox-Yankees could not attract that type of viewership as they only got 9.3 percent. All of the above numbers come from the web site http://en.wikipedia.org. . In the last 33 years the Super Bowl's ratings have ranged from 39 to 45 percent, which ranges from double to quadruple the number of viewers you get with the Super Bowl as opposed to the NBA Finals.

The next problem generally with the NBA Finals being more popular is the overall view of the two leagues. While NBA Commissioner David Stern has done a lot to clean up the league's image which includes improving it's dress code there was a long period of time when the NBA had a bad image and people started to greatly lose interest. The general feeling was that the NBA was for gangsters as it became predominately black. As it did, the players often reflected that as numerous players even today are covered in tattoos and it used to be that they would often wear certain types of jewelry, something which was cleaned up by Stern.

On the other hand, the NFL, in some of those senses is not much better it did not have the decline that the NBA had in terms of interest in the sport. People kept coming to the games and most people have continued watching football on Sunday afternoons. Don't count on that changing anytime soon either. Especially on the first Sunday in February.

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