Buyers looking for NBA playoff inventory can pretty much have their pick in any round, agency sources said, but TNT, ESPN and ABC all report solid sales numbers and say the NBA has benefited from strong ratings and the scarcity of male viewers for entertainment programming.
Trish Frohman, Turner Sports senior vice president of sales, said TNT is more than 80 percent sold for inventory it places on sale, based on its projections of how many games will be played. If a large number of series go to six or seven games, TNT would have more inventory to sell.
ESPN/ABC Sports sales officials indicated their sell-through rates are similar overall, and tracking well ahead of last year. Sales are strongest for the first three rounds, with the Finals lagging slightly.
Buyers said most of the postseason deals the networks landed were with NBA sponsors or advertisers who bought across the entire season. Indeed, the networks offered few examples of advertisers new to the playoffs. Those wishing to buy for the postseason only are going round by round or almost game by game, some agency sources said, because there’s general confidence that inventory will be available.
Ad prices started around $35,000 and grow to more than three times that for the conference finals, they said.
Only weekend games in the first two rounds will be on ABC, while the conference finals will be exclusive to cable, before ABC picks up exclusive prime-time coverage of the Finals.
Because of a 6.5 rating for the Finals last year, lowest ever for a Finals in which every game was broadcast live, ABC has had to cut rates from over $400,000 to about $350,000 per 30-second spot, guaranteeing a 9.5 rating instead of the 11.5 guarantee last year.
But the cable networks have momentum from the regular season, with ESPN and TNT growing ratings by 8 percent and 17 percent, respectively.
ESPN has signed a handful of major ad packages specific to the playoffs. McDonald’s, for instance, is sponsoring the playoff bracket on ESPN, ABC, espn.com and nba.com, real estate ESPN did not sell last year.
AIG picked up ads for any games that go to overtime on ESPN or ABC, continuing a strategy that began last year with college football. If games in the Finals go to an extra session, it becomes a major financial commitment.
20th Century Fox made buys on both ESPN and TNT around its film “The Day After Tomorrow” and reached a promotional deal with the NBA to splice in game footage with promotion for the film. Universal Pictures has a similar arrangement for “Van Helsing.”
ON THE HBO DOCKET: HBO has unearthed a forgotten story from pre-World War II Germany for its latest sports documentary, “Hitler’s Pawn,” which debuts July 14. The 90-minute film tells the story of Margaret Lambert, a Jewish high jumper who was used by the Nazi regime as a tool to keep the United States from boycotting the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.
Trying to prove it was not anti-Semitic, the German government allowed Lambert to compete in Olympic trials and told her she’d get a chance to represent Germany in the Games. But when the Olympics rolled around, she was kept from competing. Lambert then moved to the United States, and HBO tracked her down several years ago. The producers brought Lambert, now in her 90s, back to Germany for the first time, where she was introduced to the German woman who competed in her place.
Also on the docket for HBO Sports is a 60-minute documentary called “Half Mast,” about the 2001 Yankees-Diamondbacks World Series, held weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. It will debut in mid-September.
Its theme is how baseball and the unforgettable seven-game Series brought the country back to a sense of normalcy.
President Bush was interviewed at the White House for “Half Mast” by HBO producer Joe Levine.
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HBO Sports President Ross Greenburg said the impetus came when he walked out of Game 3 of the Series at Yankee Stadium, where Bush threw out the first pitch, and found himself high-fiving police officers after a Yankees victory.
“I knew I was living a documentary,” Greenburg said, “and went back to the office and told my guys to start working on it then.”
One show you won’t see from HBO Sports this year is “Hard Knocks,” which goes behind the scenes at an NFL training camp. Greenburg said the show, produced in conjunction with NFL Films, will return to HBO, but this year the network did not want to have to compete with the Olympics for viewers.
Andy Bernstein can be reached at abernstein@sportsbusinessjournal.com.
