NBA TV Ratings August 2020: How have Donald Trump’s comments on Boycotting NBA affected its ratings

NBA TV Ratings have been a point of discussion ever since Donald Trump berated the league for allowing players to kneel. How has it impacted the ratings?

The President of the United States has recently criticised the NBA. He stated that the league was in “big trouble, bigger trouble than they understand because of how they had approached kneeling of the players during the national anthem.

He also stated that the NBA people were “very, very nasty and frankly, very dumb” for supporting the players’ stance on racial justice.

Commissioner Adam Silver said that the NBA will not take any action on the players kneeling during the national anthem. The entire NBA fraternity was all for peaceful protests and thus kneeling was something that wasn’t ever going to be penalised.

Also Read: Donald Trump picks Michael Jordan over LeBron James as GOAT; slams NBA and LeBron for political stance

NBA TV Rating August 2020

With Trump really going after the NBA in terms of how it has approached ‘kneeling of athletes’, it was assumed that the TV Ratings would fall drastically.

While that did happen in the first few days of the Bubble restart, since then things have been getting back to normal and the NBA TV Ratings are in fact above average currently.

The first week recorded a 14% reduced from the pre coronavirus average. However, it surged to 14% above the average after the first weekend itself. 

And now with the NBA playoffs round the corner, the NBA TV ratings would shoot off the roof.

Thus Trump’s comments about boycotting the NBA did not have a lasting effect on the TV Ratings, which can be seen as a massive win for the NBA.

NBA is not a Donald Trump fan

Many of the NBA fraternity have also criticized the President of the United States. Both the Warriors and Raptors did not visit the White House when they won Championships.

Teams have knelt all through the NBA Bubble restart, despite the threats from Trump. LeBron James led the way by commenting that the NBA wouldn’t lose anything if Trump stopped watching it.