RUSH: How about this, folks. “Ratings Crash for NBA, MLB After Protest-Filled Debuts.” Who was it that predicted this was going to happen? I think it was your host. Your host here of 32 years and counting on the EIB Network.
“As the NBA and MLB return from their coronavirus-imposed hiatus, it appears TV viewers are not interested in what the increasingly woke leagues have to offer. With both baseball and basketball draped in all sorts of Black Lives Matter and social justice symbolism for their opening games, a substantially smaller number of fans tuned-in to the rest of the week’s games.”
The openers did okay, but after that (raspberry)… Some of it could have been the fact that there’s no fans, but the NBA crashed. You want to hear some numbers? This comes from Outkick.com. Neither league did anything to write home about. As for the openers, Outkick reported the return of the NBA on TNT saw the following numbers: The Lakers and Clippers, 3.4 million. The Pelicans and the Jazz, 2.1 million.
Folks, that may sound like a lot of numbers. That’s nothing for fans who’ve been starved. I mean, NBA fans who’ve been starved of games since they were shut down in the early spring, late winter. That’s nothing, compared to what the average Lakers-Clippers game would be. Ditto Pelicans-Jazz.
Major League Baseball return numbers are also underwhelming. The Yankees and the Washington Nationals, four million. The Dodgers and the Giants, 2.8 million. That’s nothing to write home about. Ryan Glasspiegel of the Outkick.com website added more ratings numbers on Twitter. He said: “To be fair since I compared MLB vs NBA return night 1, here is night 2,” which is July 24th. “MLB (last Friday, ESPN), Mets-Braves (4p) – 922K.”
Not even a million viewers. Now, let me tell you something, folks. I’m here to tell you that ESPN and TNT, all the regional sports networks that were televising these games were expecting — I could hear it in the announcers’ voices — they were expecting massive numbers based on one thing. The fact the game had not been played since last season, that spring training had been interrupted by the coronavirus, and they assumed that Major League Baseball fans were chomping at the bit, even though they weren’t gonna be allowed back in the stadium, they were gonna watch on television. They couldn’t wait. They were just ready to burst with excitement.
And you could hear it — you know, I watched some of those games. Well, I didn’t stick with the whole thing but I tuned in because it’s my job, man, to know what’s going on out there. And I tuned in and I wanted to see what these games looked like with no fans. And, of course, I studied the announcers. And, man, I don’t want to call out any specific games because I don’t want to call out any specific announce crews. As you know, I don’t try to make it a point here of creating rivalries and ripping people by name simply on the basis of media performance.
Political is a different thing, but you could tell their excitement, “Oh, we’ve been so denied, oh, this is the greatest day in our lives, oh!” You could just tell from the announcers that they thought that the fans were chomping at the bit and were numbering in the millions. Mets-Braves — ESPN — this is after the opener, this is the second day, 922,000. The Brewers and the Cubs had one million viewers and the Los Angeles Angels and the Oakland A’s, 797,000 viewers.
This is not enough of an audience to get advertising revenues to, in any way, support and make up for the loss of actual fans in stadiums buying what they buy — tickets, concessions, souvenirs, and all of that. NBA, July 31st, night number two, you know, game number two. Celtics and Bucks, 1.3 million. Dallas Mavericks and the Houston Rockets, 1.7 million.
Now, for good measure, it’s been pointed out baseball can’t blame the coronavirus. The virus didn’t stop people from watching Brady and Tiger and Phil Mickelson and Peyton Manning play golf last May. So, folks, it is clear the American people, a majority, have no interesting in watching something with BLM all over the pitcher’s mound, Black Lives Matter all over the signage in ballparks. They don’t want to tune in and watch a bunch of players kneeling during the American national anthem. They just don’t want to see it.
And I hope the people in the NFL are watching this. I doubt it because I think Twitter runs American sports now. I think Twitter and Nike are running professional sports. We know they’re running the NBA, and we know that China is running the NBA. The NBA is in bed — Nike and China is who the NBA I think considers their loyalties to be aimed at.
But I’m telling you these ratings crashes have nothing to do with the fact there aren’t any fans in the stadiums. The American people just don’t want to be preached to by a Marxist, pro-communist organization while they are trying to get enthused and excited about the return of major league professional sports. It’s not complicated to understand at all.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Mike in Houston, you’re next, sir. Great to have you here. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. I just wanted to say that we were all actually chomping at the bit for baseball to start back up again. We couldn’t get past the first five minutes of the support of BLM and the Marxist support. So myself and many friends, we turned it off. And I never saw first pitch. And I took it one step further, I called my provider and canceled my baseball package, my MLB package ’cause I wasn’t gonna sit there and watch that. My question is, how does MLB not know who their fan base is?
RUSH: You know, this is something that I can’t figure out. We played a sound bite or two from Jason Whitlock, formally the Kansas City Scar and formerly ESPN, and he made the point that everybody in the world can find out who Black Lives Matter is because they’re proud of it. All you gotta do is go to their website, and there you will find that they are a proud pro-Marxist, anti-American organization. And yet every professional sports league believes they’re getting into bed with a civil rights organization. It’s the most amazing thing. Now, why do you think that is?
CALLER: That’s the million-dollar question, Rush —
RUSH: No, it’s easy. I’ll tell you why. Because they get caught up in the media. They get caught up in Twitter. They’re following Twitter. And the media follows Twitter. And if they do that then they’re gonna think the American people think that Black Lives Matter is a civil rights organization, so it is a cheap way of marketing. Just follow where Twitter goes and tell yourself that Twitter is America. ‘Cause they’re not this stupid. They’re not this —
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: — incapable of learning.
CALLER: Well, the people out in the streets carrying BLM signs aren’t the ones sitting at home watching baseball and paying for the extra package and all that sort of thing, so, I mean, it’s just ridiculous —
RUSH: Exactly.
CALLER: — that they would take that route.
RUSH: And, by the way, the people at Black Lives Matter threatening to boycott, they’re not going to games, either. They’re already boycotting —
CALLER: They were never going anyway.
RUSH: Yeah, they’re not sports fans to begin with.
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: Why do all of these automobile manufacturers make these stupid TV commercials with a polar bear following a guy driving a Prius home to give him a hug for supposedly saving the planet and saving the polar bears? It’s because the people that run the car company have made the marketing decision to try to convince the public to buy their cars because they are woke on climate change. Not because their cars are cool. Not because their cars are the best, but they’re woke on climate change.
I call it the Twitter effect. And I think Twitter is responsible for destroying the media. I know that for a fact. I think Twitter is the reason the Democrat Party is an ongoing, daily train wreck. And by the way, I’m not an solving these people of responsibility. Lord knows I would never do that. I think Twitter is why Black Lives Matter and Antifa are treated as civil rights organizations because that’s how they’re portrayed by the bots and the artificial humans that literally populate Twitter.
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RUSH: The owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, former CEO Microsoft Steve Ballmer, I got a sound bite coming up. He says it’s important to keep sports going so players can speak out on Black Lives Matter. Now, is this guy a literal ignoramus? Or is that marketing?
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RUSH: Here’s Steve Ballmer. Now, folks, you tell me, this guy used to be the CEO of Microsoft. He cashed out, multibillionaire, and bought the Los Angeles Clippers of the NBA from the hated Donald Sterling. Donald Sterling was the acknowledged — well, no, he never admitted it, but they claimed he was the racist owner of the Clippers.
This is Ballmer. This is on CNBC today, this morning, the cohost said to Ballmer, “I’m the biggest sports fan in the world and happy as anybody that sports are back in the magnitude that they are.” They’re not back in much magnitude, Scott. Scott Wapner is the guy here. Scott, that’s the whole point. They’re not back with much magnitude. He said, “They’re working out well for the most part. Mr. Ballmer, what do you say to those who suggest that our priorities are messed up here?”
BALLMER: Society wants some sense of normalcy. Society wants sports. Sports rallies people. It brings people together. Even now, particularly with the issues of Black Lives Matter and racial equity, I think it’s important to — to actually get sport going and let — let our players speak out on these important issues.
RUSH: So it’s important to keep sports going so players can speak out on Black Lives Matter. Now, this is a guy, because he’s got a couple of billion — well, he’s got more than that. Because he’s got billions of dollars, he’s considered to be brilliant because he’s CEO of Microsoft, he’s supposed to be brilliant because Bill Gates is the guy that put him there, and Gates is also brilliant. But how is this brilliant? We need sports so that athelets, players can continue to speak out on Black Lives Matter?
I remember watching the St. Louis Rams, a game in St. Louis in the aftermath of the Ferguson, Missouri, riots. And during player introductions half of the Rams players are running onto the field with their hands up replicating the “Hands up, don’t shoot” metaphor or mantra that was the lying take from what happened to Michael Brown. “Hands up, don’t shoot” never happened.
The story was that Michael Brown was innocently walking down the street on a Saturday afternoon thinking about his first week at college that was gonna be coming up in a couple of months. I know. But that’s what they said he was doing. When he wasn’t walking on the sidewalk. He was walking the middle of the street. He had just robbed a convenience store, a cop came along and stopped him, and he attempted to take the cop’s weapon.
The story was the cop pulled over, attacked the guy, and murdered him because he was black, all the while Michael Brown had his hands up saying “Hands up, don’t shoot.” Never happened. But yet here are these idiots being introduced, St. Louis Rams players, and I’m asking myself, do they really not know what happened? And I said they may not. They pay attention to the media, they probably believe the lie.
So now we’ve got all of professional sports, from the commissioner level, from the ownership level in bed with Black Lives Matter, which not a civil rights group. They are a Marxist organization. In fact, let me find something. I know I’ve got something here in the sound bite roster about this. I’ve got something somewhere in the Stack that I was going through here, and it makes this point. I guess it’s not the audio sound bite roster. So it’s gotta be in the Stack here. I might have been thinking of the Ballmer bite that you just heard.
But literally, folks, the NFL, Major League Baseball, and the NBA are in bed with Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter is an acknowledged, proud, not hiding it, Marxist, anti-American organization. And professional sports is in bed with it. Now, let’s examine. Why? Well, in the case of the NBA and the NFL, they could say, “Well, 75 to 90% of our players are African-American. And if our players think that Black Lives Matter is a civil rights organization, we’re not gonna argue with ’em and we’re not gonna bring ’em in and teach ’em, and we’re not gonna bring ’em in and tell ’em that they’re wrong. We’re just gonna take the path of least resistance and we’re gonna appear to be in bed with Black Lives Matter so our players don’t strike and leave us high and dry.”
That’s one possible explanation. Another possible explanation is that the owners know that Black Lives Matter is pro-Marxist, but they don’t care, because they believe that most of the country thinks that Black Lives Matter is a civil rights organization. And so they’re not also gonna teach the American people. They’re not gonna teach anybody anything. They’re simply gonna react to what they think a majority of people think. And if they’re governed by Twitter, if the NFL, if Major League Baseball, if the NBA are governed by Twitter, then I will guarantee you they are going to think that most people think Black Lives Matter is an offshoot of Dr. Martin Luther King and that’s it.
There’s another possibility. It’s that plus they hate conservatism, plus they hate conservatives, they hate Republicans. And so no matter what else, they are not going to do anything that makes it look like they support conservatives. It’s not that they hate conservatives. The dirty little secret is in the NFL that a lot of the owners are. But, see, they don’t want anybody to know. Oh, God, no. So they’ll come out, and they’ll appear to oppose conservatism. But take a look at their political fundraisers when they do ’em.
I mean, you’ve got some commie SOBs that own teams in the NFL, but a lot of them, folks, are not. But they don’t want anybody to know. But it’s absurd because Black Lives Matter is devoted to the literal destruction of America, as founded. They’re open about it. They’re open about it. And they are seeking membership of people who are devoted to the same thing. And now they are in bed. Professional sports has made the decision to get in bed with Black Lives Matter.
Now we see opening ratings, NBA, Major League Baseball embarrassingly — on day two barely a million viewers of two sports that had multimillions audience sizes before all of this happened. In Major League Baseball last season the NBA was getting ready for their playoffs, this season when they were shut down ’cause of the virus.
So here’s the thing. The truth is out there. There are two truths out there. The truth of what Black Lives Matter is and the fact that the American people don’t want to watch players kneel during the national anthem. That truth is out there. It’s been out there for a number of years. And what is professional sports continuing to do? They are continuing to promote players kneeling during the anthem. They are continuing to promote and brag about their association with Black Lives Matter.
Somebody tell me how this makes any sense, beyond avoiding player revolts? I mean, the NFL, the NBA, they can’t do anything if players don’t show up, right? If their players think that Black Lives Matter is Martin Luther King reborn, then that’s what they’ve gotta treat it as. I guarantee you that’s how they would look at it.
Grab sound bite number 19. Here’s the coach Mike Ditka. He was with on Jesse Watters Saturday night on Waters World. Jesse Watters said, “When you were with the Chicago Bears, if anybody knelt during the anthem, what would you do?”
DITKA: They wouldn’t have played for us. It’s that simple. I would bench them, that’s it, until they found that it was honorable to respect the country. This country has given them an opportunity to become millionaires. You understand what I’m saying? You make a lot of money doing it. Enjoy it, respect it, but don’t act like a clown.
RUSH: And those values are so old now. Those values are considered to be so old-fashioned. What do you mean, this country made you a millionaire? We’re not millionaires. It’s indentured slavery. It’s indentured servitude to be a professional athlete today. That’s what the players will tell you. Doesn’t matter how much money they make. It’s the fact the owners are white and there aren’t any minority owners and everything these guys are risking life, limb, and property in order to entertain these slave-owning white owners. That’s the way they want to look at it, that’s the way they look at it.
So it’s absent common sense. But I’ll tell you what’s happening out there. The American people — do not doubt me — are noticing all of this. I tried. I have tried to warn you people in the NFL. I have tried to warn you people at Major League Baseball. Well, I’ve not tried to warn you people the NBA because I know your loyalties are actually with China. That is also undisputed.
How about Dianne Feinstein last week? Dianne Feinstein comes out, China is a wonderful, great, evolving nation. She had a ChiCom spy as her driver for, what, 10 years. Her husband has gotten wealthy doing deals with the ChiComs. Here comes DiFi talking about what a wonderful — she doesn’t want to hear anybody rip the China virus. She doesn’t want to hear anybody talk about the Wuhan virus. No way, because China’s a great place. Well, the NBA thinks so, too, folks. Do not doubt me on this. Do not doubt me.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You know what I think we ought to do? Cancel the games. Cancel baseball, cancel football games, but let the players just kneel. If that’s what’s gonna keep America together. You can stop the spread of COVID, but let ’em kneel like six feet apart from each other.