Assessing the potential loss of an NBA season

Just for openers, ESPN, ABC and TNT pay the league nearly $1 billion a season to air games. Advertisers spent $807 million last season. An average of 2 million people watched regular-season NBA games on ESPN last year, and an average of 2.5 million watched regular-season games on TNT (numbers from WSJ). None of that includes local broadcasts on Fox and KCAL. So what happens without all that money and all those viewers if the season is canceled? From Sports Business Daily:

The longer the lockout, the bigger the advantage for ESPN in offsetting any loss of NBA ad sales, industry analysts said. "Putting together a replacement package for the NBA is easier for ESPN than Turner," said Brad Adgate, senior vice president and director of research at Horizon Media. "ESPN has the live sports content and Turner will turn to its drama and movies to make up for NBA programming."

[CUT]

ESPN was to begin its NBA coverage Nov. 2. The network will use live college football and college basketball games to fill any programming gaps caused by the lockout. Last week, ESPN2 used coverage from the Pan American Games in place of a scheduled preseason NBA matchup. ABC does not have any NBA programming until Christmas Day. "We are working closely with our advertisers and are prepared to re-express dollars currently committed to the NBA to other properties," according to an ESPN statement.

The Christmas Day package will be particularly hard to replace because ABC relies on those games to promote its prime time schedule. The only good news is that much of the ABC/ESPN ad revenue is skewed towards the spring - and perhaps they might be able to cobble an abbreviated season. As for local broadcasts, KCAL can easily revert to its prime time news lineup (albeit at much lower ad rates). Fox, however, has little to replace the huge revenue that's generated from Laker broadcasts.