posted August 02, 2020 07:55 PM            

Ratings Crash for NBA, MLB After Protest-Filled Debuts
Warner Todd Huston
2 Aug 2020

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.

According to Outkick.com, neither league did well.

As for the opening games, Outkick reported that the return of the NBA on TNT saw the following numbers:

Lakers-Clippers: 3.4 million
Pelicans-Jazz: 2.1 million

ESPN’s MLB return numbers were also underwhelming:

Yankees-Nationals: 4.0 million
Dodgers-Giants: 2.8 million

Outkick’s Ryan Glasspiegel added more ratings numbers on Twitter.

“To be fair since I compared MLB vs NBA return night 1, here is night 2,” (July 24) he wrote, adding:

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

The Athletic’s Ethan Strauss also noted that the numbers continued to fall off for MLB:

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...........