The Indianapolis Colts and Minnesota Vikings cross-conference motion rarely lends itself to everything that qualifies as “rivalry,” but Sunday evening’s meeting also managed to draw a crowd to NBC. According to Nielsen, 16.18 million people tuned in to the lineup spread, where the colored group prevailed by a report of 21-13. While the sport was n’t terribly persuasive, at least by NFL standards—led by 39-year-old Quarterback Joe Flacco, the Colts ‘ offence only managed to convert on three of their 11 third-down conditions and failed to guide a single excursion to the dark zone—NBC’s deliveries still dwarfed the midnight competition. Flexed in after the originally scheduled Jaguars-Eagles outing was demoted to a 4: 20 p. m. ET start, the Vikings ‘ win came up shy of Sunday Night Football’s per-game average of 19.38 million linear-TV viewers, but perhaps a decent NFL outing may make everything else on the tube look ill by comparison. The rankings were unquestionably remarkable even if a fight between second-tier marketplaces attracted a significantly smaller viewers than NBC typically does on Sundays. The deciding frame of this summer’s NBA Finals was easily delivered by Sam Darnold ( two picks and a strip sack that Indy ran back for six points ), but keep in mind that a shoddy Week 9 game that saw Sam Darnold turn the ball over three times easily outperformed. On June 17, ABC’s protection of the Celtics ‘ 106-88 victory over the Mavericks drew 12.22 million people, or 3.96 million ideas quiet of our incredibly uninteresting midseason NFL game. Of course, when there’s a more interesting matchup on touch, Sunday Night Football all but puts the NBA’s final participation. The Sept. 5 Ravens-Chiefs opening averaged 25.56 million Television people, or 29.16 million when streaming impressions are tossed into the Television combination, and the subsequent Cowboys-49ers broadcast served up another 24 million NBC + Peacock viewers. That’s about double what ABC hauled in for Game 5 of the NBA Finals. It’s the NFL’s world, the rest of us just live in it. Here are two more figures that warrant a little closer inspection while we’re throwing numbers around. Parent company Comcast agreed to pay the league about$ 2.05 billion annually for the privilege when NBC re-upped its rights agreement with the NFL a few years ago. When NBC’s blockbuster renewal of its long-abandoned agreement with the NBA arrives, the discrepancy suddenly hits like a cartoon anvil falling from a great height. The cable giant pays roughly$ 400 million more annually for its NBA contract than its NFL deal. Two questions that immediately come to mind when confronted with the particulars of Comcast’s sports-rights calculus: a )” Huh”? and b )” Why”? Setting aside the first one, which is really just a marker for perplexity, the people equivalent of a dog barking at something in a pile of leaves, let’s instead tackle the interrogative. When the NFL is undoubtedly the benchmark against which all U.S. sports properties are evaluated, why is Kabletown spending more money on its NBA deal? And while we’re at it, why is NBC so eager to return to the business world with a league that appears to be succumbing to the entropic forces of late-stage cord-cutting? Before we get into the whys and wherefores, it’s probably worth noting that Comcast is n’t the only corporate titan with an NFL-grade NBA budget. Disney, which maintains the most expansive sports portfolio known to civilized man, will pay around$ 2.6 billion per year under its new deal with the Association, which is “only” about$ 100 million south of its regular NFL payment. The difference between the two probably does n’t compare to Jimmy Pitaro’s spending on Graig Nettles memorabilia. Over the summer, Comcast’s president, Mike Cavanagh, explained why the company was so eager to reclaim its status as an NBA alum. Speaking on a July earnings call, Cavanagh talked up the NBA’s pop-culture bona fides, noting that pro hoops “brings in a broad, diverse and youthful audience that is culturally relevant”. The nine-month basketball season effectively maximizes the NBC Sports calendar, which means that the now-seamless expanse of live college and professional sports will help maximize ad sales revenues while allowing for significant increases on the distribution front when the audience for primetime entertainment offerings can no longer sustain a broadcast network. Additionally, Cavanagh noted that Peacock, which had 36 million subscribers as of the end of the third quarter, will use the NBA as a major acquisition tool. While that’s a respectable figure, it still falls well behind the reach of more established juggernauts like Disney+, which boasts some 153.8 million global customers, and the untouchable first mover that is Netflix ( 282.7 million subs ). Roughly half of NBC Sports ‘ 100 regular-season games will stream on Peacock, with the rest of the slate finding placement on NBC’s Sunday and Tuesday night lineups. The NBA’s audience composition is significantly different from the weekly NFL crowd, according to Donna Langley, chairman and chief content officer of NBCUniversal Studio Group, and as a result, basketball should “open up a whole new opportunity… to invite new audience members in.” The youth movement should result in a surge of business from marketers who want to connect with more demographically apposite consumers without having to pay the nosebleed NFL prices because the NBA TV audience is roughly 20 years younger than the people who watch NBC’s primetime entertainment lineup ( 64.9 % ). ( Per media buyers, the starting budget for a 30-second commercial on Sunday Night Football is currently around$ 1 million. ) A cohort that has largely distanced itself from the televisual mainstream can also benefit from the NBA. Season-to-date, only 13.9 % of the people who watch primetime entertainment programming on the Big Four networks are members of the 18-49 demo, whereas 45 % of a typical NBA TV audience are adults under 50. Putting aside youth movements and synergies, the NBA rights packages ‘ value is largely determined by their cumulative reach. Unlike football, which enjoys a sort of eventfulness that’s born of relative scarcity, NBA games are plentiful. The average gross ratings points for regular-season outings last season were around 1.6 million viewers per game across the Disney and WBD nets, which is less than one-tenth of the NFL’s supersized deliveries ( 17.9 million per window ), but with multiple hoops outings scheduled across the week, the figures start to add up quickly. An NBA media partner can put together as many impressions as it can with a slate of 20 NFL windows throughout the season, and the advertising and affiliate costs accordingly mount as the eyeballs accumulate. Unlike the NFL, which provides an immediate fix—on a per-game basis, the league’s media partners average well over$ 40 million in ad revenue per each national broadcast—the NBA is a slower build. But given the sheer amount of inventory that’s in play during basketball’s nine-month campaign, a media partnership with the NBA is a license to print money. And as inflation becomes more difficult to pin down in prime time, marketers will continue to chase after the NBA’s younger, more wealthy audience, whose average unit cost of a 30-second spot on a scripted or reality/competition series has fallen by nearly 62 % in the last ten years alone. The media math may appear a little untrained, but those new NBA contracts do n’t have any flaws.