NBA ratings are down. Fans, former players, and league members have their own opinions as to why.
The NBA is still without a doubt one of the most popular sporting leagues in the world but they have started to see a decrease in ratings over the years. Even this season, the NBA has seen viewership drop across multiple platforms.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver has contributed the drop in viewership to the 2024 Presidential Election, World Series, and other external events on the decline.
“I think we’re just looking at a couple weeks of ratings,” – Adam Silver. “There’s always some unique things. This year we were up against the World Series, Dodgers-Yankees, two very attractive teams, they brought in a big audience. You had a presidential election which was commanding an enormous amount of attention. So I don’t think it has anything whatsoever to do with the style of play on the floor.”
However, even with these events transpiring, the NBA has a problem on its hands. Here are multiple factors as the exact reason for the decline in ratings.
Why NBA Ratings Are Down
The Product
“It’s down because we’re looking at the same thing,” Shaquille O’Neal said. “Everybody is running the same plays…Steph Curry and those guys messed it up. I don’t mind Golden State back in the day shooting threes, but every team isn’t a 3-point shooter. So why everybody has the same strategy? I think it makes the game boring.”
Shaq has more of an old-school mind in regard to style of play, however, he has a valid point, for the decline in viewership.
Over the course of the last three to four years, it’s been slowly obvious that three-point shooting is really killing the viewership and how appealing the game is, to only the casual fanbase, but even to the hardcore fanbase.
The lack of variation style of basketball is currently not what it used to be. It’s currently very redundant and fans feel like they’re watching the same thing over and over again. Along with, load management from the players.
However, the bigger problem that the NBA has when trying to address the three-point issue is that this is going to be a reoccurring theme since we’re now at a point where people recognize (media, coaches, executives, and the analytics) that getting up three-pointers is the most efficient way to play basketball.
There were signs a few years ago that if the NBA continued to go down this path of analytics-driven basketball what would things look like from a product standpoint and now the league is facing the repercussions of going down this path.
Rule Change
We’re at the same point that the league has been several times throughout the history of the NBA.
Over the last two to three years — NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has been teasing the NBA community. It’s time to implement some rule changes. Players are going to find ways to manipulate the rules. Players have been doing that since the beginning of the league’s existence. Innovation is inevitable and so are rule changes.
The league has reached a point where it’s too offensive lenient and everyone believes that you’re watching the same product over and over. Bring back defensive physicality — the reason the league took it out was because offensively the game wasn’t where it needed to be at that time. Defense was way more potent during the late 90s, and early 2000s — so the league took away hand-checking, the league didn’t allow the players to be as physical. All under David Stern which made sense at the time.
Right now the the NBA is at the other end of it, where offense is too much. The league can bring back hand-checking and allow players to be more physical. The amount of three-point shooting that is being provided by these teams, even if the league allows there to be more physicality, it would still be an efficient offense being run. It wouldn’t feel like it’s only one way to play the game.
Change the rules, bring back physicality, and allow teams to play more defense so that teams can force offenses to innovate because even now offenses don’t need to innovate because teams have maximized and realized what they’ve to do which is generate as many threes as possible.
Accessibility
Another major issue in the NBA today is that there are too many streaming services. The league has given streaming rights to ESPN, ABC, TNT, NBA League Pass, and your local games. And starting next year, the league is adding even more subscriptions — NBC and Amazon Prime are now in the mix to watch NBA games.
The viewers do not benefit from this. The reason why the NBA is making more and more money is due to the rights to these games continue to get sold (ESPN, ABC, TNT, NBC, and Amazon) are fighting for these games so the bidding goes higher and higher — resulting in the players receiving more money (since the players get the same cut percentage of how much money of them getting higher and higher) so that means the amount of money the players are making are getting higher. However, this is making it harder for the viewers to watch. Due to how many more games are going to be spread out amongst all of these premium channels and the amount of subscriptions the viewers have to purchase. This devalues even further the subscriptions the viewers already have (since there will be fewer games across these premium channels).
The NBA is earning more money for these new TV deals while it’s becoming more expensive for the viewers to watch games on subscriptions such as NBA League Pass, even though, it’s going down in value, since you don’t even have access to all of the games. What’s worse, is the viewers don’t even have access to NBA League Pass games in their own cities. It used to be free to watch. Now, it has become expensive to watch and due to the distribution of games, it’s harder to find games.
This has led to an increase in illegal streaming. This has had a huge negative impact on the league’s revenue and ability to sell TV rights, so the best way for the NBA to fix it is to lower streaming service subscription prices or offer exclusive NBA packages that are more affordable.
Lack of Marketability of the Young Stars
This may be the biggest problem that the NBA is currently facing in promoting and marketing — the new and upcoming stars. Over the last five to seven years, the NBA has failed to properly promote and market its new stars.
The ratings are fine when Curry, LeBron James, and Kevin Durant are involved. The league is still relying heavily on those three — who are all in their mid to late thirties. LeBron, who turns 40 in a month, is still the face of the NBA. It’s undeniable that nobody is in today’s game.
The marketing for the NBA now is nowhere near where it used to be compared to 10, 15, or 20 years ago. Outside of Victor Wembanyama and Anthony Edwards, the NBA is failing at promoting their young stars. In almost every single year, in almost a decade, the league has swung and missed on the prospect they would hype up and downplay the prospects that actually live up to the hype.
The day that the NBA finds a way to properly manage and prop up a star, is when things are going to change but if the ratings are going down when LeBron, Curry, and Durant are still in the league. Imagine the outlook of the NBA once those three retire. The NBA needs to be more concerned with what’s going to happen in the next three to four years.
Summary: Will NBA Viewership Go Back Up Again?
Despite a significant decline for the NBA over the past few seasons, it’s not all bad news. All of the issues the league is currently facing — including the overwhelming choice of streaming services — can be fixed. Until then, we’ll have to wait and see what happens.
Main Image: Chuck Cook-Imagn Images
