After the Edmonton Oilers’ comeback attempt came up short on Thursday night, Disney executives now find themselves staring down the double barrels of financial misfortune. In taking a 3-0 lead in the Stanley Cup Final, the Florida Panthers effectively mirrored what the Boston Celtics have been getting up to in the NBA Finals, thereby setting up a rare twin-sweep scenario that could cost ABC hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising revenue.
The last time the NHL and NBA championship series went the bare minimum was back in 1995, when the Houston Rockets dispatched the Orlando Magic in four games a few weeks before the New Jersey Devils went on to make equally quick work of the Detroit Red Wings. To give you a sense of just how long ago that was, Houston’s headlong run through the Finals averaged a 13.9 household rating, which works out to some 21.2 million viewers per NBC broadcast. (This year’s series is averaging a 6.0 rating and 11.6 million viewers through the first three games.)
If being down 3-0 is bad news for the Oilers, the Dallas Mavericks and their fans—the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs are the only team to rally from a 0-3 start to win the Cup, while no NBA franchise has ever managed a similar feat in the Finals—it’s a downright calamitous state of affairs for Disney bean counters. Should the Celtics finish off Luka Dončić & Co. tonight, some $145 million in potential in-game sales will go up in smoke.
If Boston secures its 18th title in a clean sweep, ABC will walk away from the Finals with approximately $120 million in ad revenue. And while that’s certainly a respectable tally, it’s not even within shouting distance of things would stand after a full seven-game set.
As ad rates tend to increase over the course of a series, the network generates significantly higher in-game dollar volumes with each additional broadcast. A Game 5 nudges ABC into the $155 million neighborhood, while a sixth frame that plays out on a Thursday night likely gets the network over the $200 million hump. That’s the sweet spot; as old-school ad sales execs are wont to say, if Game 5 is when you break even, Game 6 is all gravy.
While even hinting at the prospect of a Game 7 is somewhat laughable (since the turn of the century, only four NBA Finals have gone the full term), in the unlikely event the Mavs shock the world by extending the season through June 23, ABC is looking at approximately $265 million in total in-game sales. It’s a longshot: Vegas books have calculated the odds of a Dallas victory at +2000.
The Celtics, who’ll enter tonight’s game as 1-point underdogs, haven’t lost a game on the road since the playoffs began. If Boston ends the season down in Dallas, they will have chalked up the 10th sweep since the NBA Finals first tipped off in 1950.
While basketball is where the real money is made (or unmade, as the case may be), the attendant loss of NHL revenue won’t be doing Disney any favors, either. A Panthers win on home ice Saturday night leaves ABC with some $12 million in total Stanley Cup Final sales, while a complete seven-game set would have raked in north of $20 million. Again, not likely to happen: Our friends in the desert have the Oilers listed at +1400.
Disney’s ad sales team sold out the first five games of this year’s Cup Final in short order, and in the event the Oilers are swept, the marketers who’d signed on beyond a fourth frame will have their money reimbursed. Edmonton fans, however, may take some measure of comfort in past results; the last time an NHL championship series was completed in four nights was in 1998, when the Detroit Red Wings won a second straight title by eliminating the Washington Capitals.
Detroit closed out its sweep just two days after Michael Jordan led the Chicago Bulls to their sixth NBA crown in eight years. That 87-86 clincher over the Utah Jazz would be Jordan’s final game with the Bulls.