Suits LA’s Ratings Have Not Been Great, But Reports Say It Might Get Renewed Because NBC Invested A Lot In Marketing. I Think There’s Another Reason

As the 2025 TV schedule veers towards May finales, the pressure is on network execs to make the big calls for which series will be renewed to continue on in the future, and which shows will get cancelled and not return. While surefire broadcast hits like Shifting Gears already earned a renewal after their freshman seasons, the same cannot be said just yet for NBC newcomer Suits LA, the rare spinoff whose existence stems almost entirely from its mothership’s success in streaming.

Not that the legal drama is all on its own, with NBC having only confirmed two renewals out of 15 total scripted shows. (Congrats again to comedies St. Denis Medical and Happy’s Place for landing the early wins.) But let’s not kid ourselves here. It’s pretty obvious that the network is going to give renewals to all (or at least most) of its Dick Wolf-created shows, from Law & Order: SVU to the One Chicago dramas. Which makes the fates of outliers like Suits LA harder to guess.

Why Is Suits LA In Danger Of Cancellation?

For such a high-profile NBC pick-up in 2024, Suits LA has falled well below the bar of viewership and demo ratings expectations, with numbers that would better match the O.G. show's run on USA. For instance, series premieres are usually dependable high benchmarks for an audience total, and the spinoff only brought in 2.61 million pairs of eyeballs on the night of its premiere, with delayed-viewing stats adding only an additional 1.21 million, for a total of 3.82 million, and a combined demo rating of 0.3.

Not the absolute worst turnout, but definitely not as big as NBC likely hoped for during the development phase. With several other properties like The Voice and The Irrational needing further consideration due to an impending slew of primetime NBA coverage this fall, complete with the classic theme, when that mega-deal officially starts. So some shows are destined for the chopping block, simply to make room on the schedule.

Why Suits LA Will Likely Be Saved From Cancellation

According to Deadline, NBC execs are keen on keeping Suits LA around for at least one more season because of how much money the network has already dumped into the show and its large-scale marketing campaign ahead of the season's arrival. To give up on it now would be voluntarily eating a lot of costs without giving the first-year project enough time to find itself an audience.

And while that obviously does make sense, as no one wants to just readily lose millions of dollars on bad decisions, I think there's probably also some hope behind the scenes that Suits LA can not only attain and retain more of the flagship show's fanbase, but that it can also go on to achieve the same kind of gargantuan streaming success that Suits itself had when it debuted on Netflix in 2023.

As others might remember, it reigned supreme on Netflix's Top 10 list, which was a huge boost for the brand, even if cast and crew members were ruffled by the lack of meaningful residuals. So NBC may want to hold onto the spinoff until the point where Netflix swoops in with acquisition offers, which could then hopefully boost awareness of the follow-up series to the point where its linear ratings also rise. It's unclear how the show is faring on Peacock, but we'd have probably heard more about it by now if it was crushing everything else.

It likely also helps that Suits LA is a legal drama and doesn't feature a ton of massive stunt sequences or CGI effects. But with a cast of stars that includes Stephen Amell and OG vet Gabriel Macht, it's probably not the cheapest show on the network, either. But so long as the costs don't override the audience watching, hope remains for Season 2!

Suits LA airs Sunday nights on NBC at 9:00 p.m. ET.