The Wimbledon men's final rating in the U.S.--with NO Americans, scored slightly higher than the high-rated women's final with one American. Graf was not American, had majors finals against non-Americans, which were were highly rated in US broadcasts.
Moreover, the American Roddick's USO final only earned a 3.5 share, while a final with no Americans (Rafter vs. Rudeski, '97 USO) had a 4.0 share. Nationalism plays no factor whatsoever.
Your theory is debunked .
You debunked nothing at all, because the fact that an event without countryman rates higher than an event with a countryman doesn't prove that the presence of the counrtyman in the lower rated event had no favorable impact on its audience, the fact that nationalism boost the audience doesn't mean that it will always boost it to a point where an event with a countryman has to automatically obtain a higher TV ratings than the event without countryman, because there are of course other variables than nationalism that impact the ratings.
And by using the figures of the wimpledon final you provided, I can return it against you in the Female Vs male tennis popularity debate, by safely concluding that male tennis is so much more popular than female tennis that the nationalism impact on the TV rating is sometimes (or often?) not enough to ensure bigger ratings for a Female event with a countryman Vs a male event without countryman.
And as far as your comparison between the share of the Rafter/Ruzedski final and the share of the Roddick final it also fails, because you compare 2 event with 6 years of distance, which means that they are not compared under the same conditions, so there are several viriables that impacts the results like tennis popularity at that time, popularity of the players present in the finals, what TV programs were competing against the tennis finals at that times, and many other variables that it would take too much time to list them all, as I said before, if nationalism has decidedly an impact on the TV ratings, it is not the only factor.
And when you talk about Grafs finals ratings in the USA, it doesn't contradict anything from what I said, because :
A/ I didn't say that a female final can't obtain a high rating if there is no countryman playing it, instead I said that it can't obtain a higher rating than the male final if there is no countryman in the female final, which is absolutey not the same thing.
B/ I note that you cared to only write that Graf's finals had high ratings, instead of saying that Graf's finals had higher rating than male finals, and I bet that if Graf's finals scored higher TV ratings than the male finals the same years you would have wrote it that way, so once again the Graf argument fails to contradict anything from what I said, it would even tend to confirm it.
And honestly, I don't understand how you can maintain that nationalism has no impact on the TV ratings for tennis, when it is obvious that everywhere in the world, so USA included, there are tons of peoples that watch a some sport events on TV ONLY if there is a countryman present in the final stage. I do that for some other sports than tennis that i don't care much, and many of my friends also, so please don't make a fool of you by trying to maintain that absolutely no american would follow a sport in the same way as the one I described. A US open final is not only followed by tennis addicts who would watch it anyway whatever the nationality of the finalsts should be, that kind of event is also watched by some peoples who usually don't care much about tennis but find an interest to watch it sometimes when a countryman plays the match.
So when you write :
Nationalism plays no factor whatsoever.
It is truely one of the most ridiculous statement that I must have readed on this board, it's just take some common sense for anybody to understand why.
