The numbers are in and it appears Unrivaled is experiencing the dreaded sophomore slump.
The Monday Jan. 5 debut averaged 175K viewers while the games that Friday averaged 71K viewers. Now, Front Office Sports compared this to the 221K average across the regular season and the playoffs and the peak of 377K for the Queen of the Court 1v1 tournament.
There’s obviously a lot of factors that have gone into this drop off including but not limited to, Napheesa Collier requiring off-season surgery for both ankles, Angel Reese not playing, the league failing to nab Caitlin Clark in year two, games starting at a weird time on a weird day, the limits of Paige Bueckers’ motion when it comes to translating social media audiences to TV viewers, the list goes on…
The problem is those are all excuses that quite frankly, I don’t want to hear right now.
Unrivaled CEO (and Phee’s husband) Alex Bazzell was quoted in Front Office Sports article saying,
“Leagues aren’t built overnight.”
The only problem is that’s not what your wife said to the whole world already.
If you are following No Cap Space on various social media platforms you will have seen a clip on our page of Phee making a very strong statement during an Unrivaled broadcast.
“Being on this side with Unrivaled, I know what it takes to run a sustainable business,” she said. “So I think if they can’t find a model that makes that happen they need to put people in place who can.”
It was a good look before we saw the returns. But now, it’s easy for the wrong people to come in and seize on those low numbers and here’s your husband, looking goofy in the spotlight.
I’ve been on air saying that Unrivaled had the potential to be a strong bargaining tool as CBA negotiations continue, but we are at a point where I feel there’s a little too much dip on the chip. I appreciate the willingness to empty the clip whenever, wherever, but as I stated over the summer, consistent messaging and a strong image in the court of public opinion is going to be big moving forward. Hiccups and unenforced errors like this swings things back in Big Blazerbert’s favor because now you’re talking out of both sides of your neck. Is this a sustainable league that shows that the interest centers on the sport broadly? Or was the enthusiasm about the novelty of a new league and a chance for labor to enjoy themselves and get paid for once?
Unrivaled has prided itself on being for the players, by the players, but now we’re seeing the growing pains of a league that, no shade, is operating at a much smaller scale than the W. So for me, it’s keep fighting the good fight and seize the means of production, but just be mindful that the league is still in its infancy and every crack is going to be magnified from here out. You don’t want to end up having egg on your face at this pivotal moment could be tough to overcome.
There’s plenty of time for those numbers to bounce back and there’s less TV competition in the future as the NFL winds down. But every night is going to be picked apart by those trying to win a bigger labor battle and Phee and the league need to move accordingly.