The Pittsburgh Penguins finished off the San Jose Sharks to win the NFL playoffs. The Kansas City Royals won the World Series. The Denver Broncos are the current Super Bowl champions. The Golden State Warriors, based in Oakland, probably will beat the Cleveland Cavaliers, another small market team. However, there is evidence that team size does not mute national media interest.

Presumably, the small town winners are bad for television and proof that large market teams cannot buy their way to championships the way that the New York Yankees did two generations ago. Team parity, of brilliant small market general managers? Presumably small market teams do not have the budgets of teams in Los Angeles and New York City.

If media coverage improves when large market teams are in the playoffs, then national television does not get the ratings that come with teams in cities with millions of residents.

Looking at all the theories about small market teams, the one about low ratings is wrong. According to the Hollywood Reporter:

The NBA Finals are still on a roll for ABC.

Friday night’s Game 4 audience averaged over 16 million viewers, peaking with north of 20 million from 11:30 p.m. to midnight ET.

The Golden State Warriors’ win over the Cleveland Cavaliers, giving the former a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven series, also delivered a record number of unique viewers for an NBA game on WatchESPN. The showdown generated over one million unique viewers.

The basketball games are still on track to be the second-most-watched ever on the network through four games, according to Fast Nationals from Nielsen. This year’s series is averaging over 17 million viewers.

As for the Super Bowl, according to CNNMoney:

Peyton Manning’s potential last game, $5 million ads, and Beyoncé made Super Bowl 50 the third most watched broadcast in U.S. television history.

The game, which saw the Denver Broncos win a defensive battle over the Carolina Panthers 24-10, averaged 111.9 million TV viewers.

This number was a decline from last year’s record viewership of 114.4 million people on NBC.
The Super Bowl in 2014 had the second largest viewership with an average audience of 112.2 million.

The peak of this year’s game came from 8:30 to 9:00 p.m. ET when an average of 115.5 million people tuned in. This was during the halftime show that starred Coldplay, Beyoncé and Bruno Mars.

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So, one could make the case that Beyoncé was responsible for the numbers, but the viewership for the balance of the Super Bowl was outstanding, even without her help.

The theory that small markets hurt media ratings is wrong.

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