NBA viewership down

[Showtime 80]

Every freaking year a thread like this is created and every freaking year it’s wrong. Even after the NBA just signed a record media deal you would think people would see that the NBA is in a good place and people are watching.

Sports teams have become vanity projects for the uber rich which combined with social media, China and gambling have increased their value thanks to the many new avenues that have been created to increase visibility and profits. Quality of product has nothing to do with it as the highest ratings the NBA has ever had and will have came from 1988 to 1998 (gee I wonder why).

Modern “stars” and teams are not nearly as engaging as those of the past which is also a major factor aside from the snooze fest Chuck and Duck fest style of play to why people prefer to watch 1 minute highlight rather than closely following the league

MLB and NHL team valuations and TV contracts have also gone through the roof as well and they have NOWHERE near the numbers of people watching it when compared to the 80’s and 90’s.

What is considered quality is subjective. And to compare ratings from the 80s,90s (basically the stone ages at this point) to today without considering how media is consumed is dumb and is a topic that has been beaten to death. We literally have the same conversation every year.

The NFL still breaks “old school” ratings records with the Super Bowl and playoffs every year so that is not an excuse. With the “old school” method LeBron the NBA’s supposed new “golden boy” still has some of the least watched Finals in history, that’s a fact.

You know what you never heard pundits and fans say back in the late 80’s early 90’s (the real NBA Golden Era)? “You know what we need? An ultra soft game with all teams playing 5 out offenses shooting only layups and 35+ 3’s a game basically killing physicality and cratering rivalries in the process!!!” No they just watched in the droves the peak of basketball with Jordan, Magic, Bird, Isiah, Olajuwon, Malone, Barkley and the dozens of other magnetic superstars and teams of the era! They even made meaningless All-Star Saturday and Sunday must see TV unlike the modern primadonas!

Nobody wanted this modern crap but the league was forced to change its rules and general paradigm to accommodate the low IQ fundamentals deficient AAU poisoned Allen Iverson disciples that just want to show off their “skilzzzzzzz” taking 20+ shots while shooting 42% from the field After Allen they decided to scrap all the strict drinking rules, fully eliminate hand checking and clear the paint with the 3 seconds defensive penalty to basically put a red carpet towards the rim for perimeter players.

The modern sanitized NBA is geared towards soccer moms and short attention span kid tik tokers with the “home run 3 pointer” at the center of its universe and it is the worst version of the “sport” since the original “cage ball” of the early 20th century

[The4thHorseman]

A 6yr span was the golden era and everything else sucked?

Interesting way to look at it I guess

[Sixers in 4]

They way I sort of look at things is Silver has spent years trying to convince fans with gimmicks and shiny objects rather than fixing the game. I don't understand it to be honest. Like none of the old heads like this 3PT spamming. You go watch TNT and most of what becomes viral isn't even stuff related to the NBA. It's Shaq goofin on Kenny. Charles doing his truth telling and telling an offcolor joke aka Smollett.

To me that sort of tells you the game is boring asf. Noone is talking about basketball games themselves not even the people paid to watch and comment them. Do you watch the NFL pregame and postgame shows and see that? No. We all know what needs to be fixed the 3PT shot needs to be tweaked. The playin is stupid and needs to go if anything we need less teams making the playoffs (even if that means less playoff revenue) to save the regular season. It seems ass backwards to me to sacrifice 82 games worth of revenue for 32 teams to save 4-7 games for four teams which shouldn't be in the playoffs because you aren't going to convince anyone fans or GMs a bunch of meaningless games are meaningful with smoke and mirrors.

Now they are begging stars to play why? If you are a team with a star player that you know needs to sit to likely stay healthy why are you going to have him play a whole bunch of road games if 36-46 is going to get you a spot in the play in. As a sixer fan I don't care if Embiid plays on the road at all or george for that matter. Like we are 1-3 are fans panicking we don't care because we know that once George and Embiid come back we can work them in and easily get a top 8 spot.

If you are a NFL team and 1-3 you are freaking out because everygame is meaningful. it is what it is and Silver needs to fix it or just let teams manage the regular season like NFL teams manage the preseason try to get through it without injuries until the games that matter start.

[PhilBlackson]

I’m sure streaming has a HUGE part to do with it but it’s odd to me because I honestly think the parity has helped me become more interested in more games as now there are naturally more players I like watch hoop.

[JN61]

Not surprised. The product is just bad. All the 3 point chucking, no defense allowed nonsense. Casual fans are picking it up at last.

[doogie_hauser]

Not surprised. The product is just bad. All the 3 point chucking, no defense allowed nonsense. Casual fans are picking it up at last.

Um the Celtics won the chip last year with one of the greatest defensive back courts the league has ever seen in Jrue and White, plus the Jays (both of them) have evolved into legit elite two way wings, who have proven to become valuable defenders in their own right.

Yes it's more of a shooters game these days, but so what?.shooting and perimeter offence led attacks is aligned with more skinny/slender and athletic types being drafted and developed in the league.

No one wants to see boring, defensive 65-69 grinding scorelines in games anymore

[jvsimonetti0514]

The thing I’m very curious is how many people are watching illegally. The cable bundle is evaporating very quickly. ESPN has 68 million subscribers the last time I saw and it’s less and less everyday. Last season MSG networks most watch Knicks game was like 200k and the whole city seems very excited about this team. I just have a hard time imagining that there’s hundreds of thousands of people using streameast to explain where the tv audience has gone. NBA demo is younger, so maybe they’re just watching highlights and fan edits on YouTube? With the World Series doing 15 million per game and NFL Sunday on CBS doing 28 million the NBA has a lot of work cut out for them. That’s why I really like the moves linking up with NBC and Amazon. Over 200 million people have Amazon accounts and for like 20 bucks you can get broadcast tv for free. There should be a jump in viewership by these moves but by how much is going to be an interesting thing to see.

[Showtime 80]

Not surprised. The product is just bad. All the 3 point chucking, no defense allowed nonsense. Casual fans are picking it up at last.

Um the Celtics won the chip last year with one of the greatest defensive back courts the league has ever seen in Jrue and White, plus the Jays (both of them) have evolved into legit elite two way wings, who have proven to become valuable defenders in their own right.

Yes it's more of a shooters game these days, but so what?.shooting and perimeter offence led attacks is aligned with more skinny/slender and athletic types being drafted and developed in the league.

No one wants to see boring, defensive 65-69 grinding scorelines in games anymore

Both extremes are equally horrendous specially when it’s artificially created by a bunch of defense neutering rule changes of the past 20+ years. At least with those scores in the 60’s like the Heat-Knicks if felt like an intense battle not a chuck till you drop shooting exhibition.

I like most people miss the days when the Showtime Lakers could win the title one year and the Bad Boy Pistons could win it the next with a completely different style and mindset. That’s why that era was the Golden Age, variety, diversity, creativity and physicality which created the most intense rivalries the sport has ever seen without rules artificially altering the pendulum one way or the other.

But that was an NBA where players came in almost fully developed by 3/4 years of college and not influenced by the modern AAU cancer that has turned the NBA into a glorified developmental league where even finished products like Russell Westbrick one of the all time least intelligent and fundamentally deficient players can win MVP and average a triple double for 3 years because the league has altered its rules to cater to that type of style.

[HotelVitale]

Not surprised. The product is just bad. All the 3 point chucking, no defense allowed nonsense. Casual fans are picking it up at last.

Um the Celtics won the chip last year with one of the greatest defensive back courts the league has ever seen in Jrue and White, plus the Jays (both of them) have evolved into legit elite two way wings, who have proven to become valuable defenders in their own right.

Yes it's more of a shooters game these days, but so what?.shooting and perimeter offence led attacks is aligned with more skinny/slender and athletic types being drafted and developed in the league.

No one wants to see boring, defensive 65-69 grinding scorelines in games anymore

Both extremes are equally horrendous specially when it’s artificially created by a bunch of defense neutering rule changes of the past 20+ years. At least with those scores in the 60’s like the Heat-Knicks if felt like an intense battle not a chuck till you drop shooting exhibition.

I like most people miss the days when the Showtime Lakers could win the title one year and the Bad Boy Pistons could win it the next with a completely different style and mindset. That’s why that era was the Golden Age, variety, diversity, creativity and physicality which created the most rivalries the sport has ever seen without rules artificially altering the pendulum one way or the other.

You don't think you just remember them having vastly different 'mindsets' and styles because that's how they were marketed? That's exactly how marketing and our brains work--give different personalities and charateristics to things so people can latch onto them and have a favorite and get invested in following them (it's why there are 5 power rangers with different colors, or 4 ninja turtles with exaggerated personalities, or the Spice Girls, N Sync, etc). But if you watch 5 minutes of an actual game from teams you think were massively different in 1988, you're going to find they run the same basic offenses. In the 'golden age of diversity' everyone ran half court offense through deep post-ups, everyone ran actions to get midrange kick-outs off post-ups, and everyone had a perimeter guy who did isos from about 20 feet out. Some teams had better post players or better perimeter guys so leaned one way or another, but the offense was absolutely not less formulaic than what happens now. (It honestly seems a lot less dynamic and more simplified than now, with fewer counters or sub-variations of sets).

I also wonder if people really think there's no diversity in today's game (or if it's just a middle-aged guy sports-talk radio talking point). My guess is some of that is people thinking about like 2 of the best 3 or 4 teams of the whole era when looking back on the 'golden age,' but then focusing on the average RS game in Oct when talking about the modern game. A team like the Nuggets now runs their offense through a 7 foot passing savant who's also unstoppable in the post. (If you were 10 years old now, this would be completely captivating and magical.) And the Celtics run offense with 4 ball-handling guys who can all penetrate and shoot (and another big who can shoot), and they average like 5 swing passes per play. The two offenses don't look similar at all, besides them both using picks and shooting 3s lots of plays (just like the past used post-ups and mid-range curls lots of plays). And both are pretty cool if you're thinking like a kid, 10 year old me would love to play Jokic or through cross court skips like the Celtics or Luka.

Not saying no one should prefer one style over another, or that there aren't some annoying things about the modern game (I do not enjoy today's officiating for one). Just that the ways people glorify the past to validate their gripes about the present are almost always greatly exaggerated and based on things that don't hold up. Basketball has always actually been pretty boring in lots of ways, if you don't like a certain level of repetition and don't like the way that people improvise within structure then it can leave you cold. I generally only watch these days if I really care about the outcome (mostly my team) or if I'm doing some research (often cuz some dumb discussion on here), and I used to watch lots of games with friends and really lock into the competition etc. But I definitely know it's me that's changed.

[The-Stallion70]

When I watch NBA basketball today I can't really relate with alot of it. So much of it doesn't even look like basketball like when Luka or Tatum make contested 30 footers, constant uncalled handchecking fouls, Harden esque flop fouls where they force contact to draw a foul, alley oops that are a main part of an offense, no post play.

NBA basketball doesn't really look like basketball anywhere else it is played imo.

[Longranger]

Fans know games are meaningless until after the all-star break. They also know only 2-4 teams are legit contenders and that’s why casuals are not heavily invested in watching.

[Pelon chingon]

Silver needs to step down. Time to bring back old school defense and Chuck out the rule changes.

[Tempe]

The thing I’m very curious is how many people are watching illegally. The cable bundle is evaporating very quickly. ESPN has 68 million subscribers the last time I saw and it’s less and less everyday. Last season MSG networks most watch Knicks game was like 200k and the whole city seems very excited about this team. I just have a hard time imagining that there’s hundreds of thousands of people using streameast to explain where the tv audience has gone. NBA demo is younger, so maybe they’re just watching highlights and fan edits on YouTube? With the World Series doing 15 million per game and NFL Sunday on CBS doing 28 million the NBA has a lot of work cut out for them. That’s why I really like the moves linking up with NBC and Amazon. Over 200 million people have Amazon accounts and for like 20 bucks you can get broadcast tv for free. There should be a jump in viewership by these moves but by how much is going to be an interesting thing to see.

Blaming illegal streaming is a cope. The folks on this board and Reddit who use those sites are not representative. NFL, MLB, NHL, and WNBA ratings all up despite facing the same secular decline in linear TV as the NBA.

The TV product is terrible as a whole. The on court play as well as the announcers, production, half time shows. Off court the players are unrelatable to your average fan. The era of manufactured drama and player movement is boring now too.

Silver better hope the upcoming draft classes can give the NBA its Caitlin Clark. Flagg, Bailey, Dybantsa, the Boozer twins etc can help


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Infinite Llamas]

Lmao at people in here simping for the NFL product. I don’t watch it but the ones I know who do complain about the game and the way it’s played all the time now. Only reason they watch is because it gives them an excuse to drink with their buddies or fantasy stuff. Let’s not kid ourselves that NFL is some idealized product. Teams like New England and Carolina and Tennessee were doomed pretty much two weeks into the season. Bottom feeders only hope is to play spoiler. Any given Sunday my ***.

[HotelVitale]

The league is in decline in my opinion. At some point the game went from being an athletic competition into full fledged entertainment. Adam Silver doesn’t understand the game. He’s an Ivy League educated lawyer who looks at the NBA as a business. I get it. He’s trying to appeal to the casual fan with all of the gimmicky stuff he’s introduced (Mickey Mouse tournament, play in tournament, All Star game draft, multi colored play in tournament courts, teams having dozens of home and away jerseys, redesigning all of the season award trophies, conference finals MVP trophies etc). The game is hard to watch for real fans: Teams spamming 50-60 3’s a game, no defense being played, players scoring 70+ frequently, load managing, not playing back to backs, marquee players acting like idiots (Ant, Ja etc), obnoxious carrying, traveling and other rule violations that slide in favor of more points and highlights. It’s turning into the WWF. Watch the NCAA or FIBA to see real basketball.

Beautiful post!

The thing is the NBA was gonna trend to this pathetic form sooner or later thanks to the AAU, high schooler and one and done generation starting to take hold in the mid 90’s with basic fundamentals and basketball IQ taking a back seat to athleticism and showing off your “skilzzzzzzz”

The NBA higher ups had no choice but to change a bunch of rules to make the game as easy as can be for the modern offensively limited players and soft Euros coming over who just want to dunk or chuck a 25 3 pointer. The attention span of these modern numbskulls would never allow them to learn the game at an organic level and master all areas like defensive positioning, posting up, moving without the ball, mid range shooting, playing through contact without flopping, boxing out on defensive and offensive rebounds etc… That’s not as fun as dribbling the air out of the ball for 20+ seconds just to heave a 25 foot brick at the horn while the other 4 guys are standing outside the 3 pint line without even attempting to grab an offensive board lol: Those are the modern offenses for you folks.

What modern youngins don’t understand is that before the NBA went Charmin soft all the great rivalries were created through physicality and actions in the paint not teams shooting 100+ 3’s a game!!! That’s why rivalries are extinct and the NBA has become a sanitized shooting exhibition of layups and 3 pointers with the rest of the court in between virtually ignored by 99% of the teams

Kind regretting that I spent a while writing up a thoughtful post assuming you were interested in talking about this topic before seeing this post. Seems like you're really invested in patently false boomer stuff that lets you complain that we were all robbed and everything was so much better and realer in the past.

In case other people are really interested in this--the NBA vastly changed its offensive strategy from about 2002-2015, and rule changes during that time didn't have much to do with it. Teams slowly came to accept that 3 pointers were more efficient than jumpshot 2s, and more importantly that the pick-and-roll-and-3s floor-spacing strategy also created far more efficient opporunities than constant post-ups and midrange shots of the crammed-in half-court offenses. Teams didn't just immediately jump from post-ups and mid-range shots to pn'r and 3s, though, and most of the 2000s and early 2010s were about teams trying to increase their spacing while also still having to create most of their shots in a relatively non-spaced floor. The shift is pretty easy to follow: lots of great players of the early 2000s are post-up bigs and physical PGs who worked well in the crammed post-up and midrange era (Shaq, Webber, Duncan, Kidd, Payton etc), while the best players of the era from 2004-2012 tended to be guys who could operate with more space and either shoot or attack really well (Dirk, Kobe, TMac, CP3, Wade, Lebron, KD). Nash is of course the key guy for the new style but he peaked in like 2005 and no one else was as 'pure' of a pn'r-and-3s guy for a while cuz things don't evolve in a linear way. By 2020, as the game shifted more completely to the spread-floor pn'r strategy, most of the best players were either special long shooters (Curry, KD, Dame, Kawhi) or special pn'r creators-in-space (Giannis, Harden, Luka, etc). In those 20 years there was a total shift in strategy and approach, and it definitely wasn't because of rule changes (the 3 was legal since 1979, pn'r was legal well before) but rather just the usual evolution of things.

The NBA has supported these changes and did not like the early 2000s style, but the game would've gone that way even if the NBA fiercely opposed it. This style of play simply is more efficient, and overseas leagues with much different officiating styles have adopted it too. Any attempt to parse out what's wrong with it or what could be different has to start with that.

[El Turco]

Arent primetime ratings usually lower during election years? I know some shows dont even air episodes until January.

[SpreeChokeJob]

The thing I’m very curious is how many people are watching illegally. The cable bundle is evaporating very quickly. ESPN has 68 million subscribers the last time I saw and it’s less and less everyday. Last season MSG networks most watch Knicks game was like 200k and the whole city seems very excited about this team. I just have a hard time imagining that there’s hundreds of thousands of people using streameast to explain where the tv audience has gone. NBA demo is younger, so maybe they’re just watching highlights and fan edits on YouTube? With the World Series doing 15 million per game and NFL Sunday on CBS doing 28 million the NBA has a lot of work cut out for them. That’s why I really like the moves linking up with NBC and Amazon. Over 200 million people have Amazon accounts and for like 20 bucks you can get broadcast tv for free. There should be a jump in viewership by these moves but by how much is going to be an interesting thing to see.

People can watch championships on broadcast TV for free or cheap, so they don’t need to use illegal streams. Views for championships are down compared to before, nearly at bottom levels. Half to one third peak Magic, Bird, MJ years. Interest has been low these past five years either through play or lack of true stars post Curry Lebron. I don’t see interest rising even in the next five years when the league rolls out gimmicks like in season tournaments and playins. When Cuban and Warriors minority investors are dumping shares of their team at around the same time, doesn’t sound like they have faith in the long term prospects of the league. Owning a franchise team used to be something an owner would never let go and pass on to their children.

[Showtime 80]

Um the Celtics won the chip last year with one of the greatest defensive back courts the league has ever seen in Jrue and White, plus the Jays (both of them) have evolved into legit elite two way wings, who have proven to become valuable defenders in their own right.

Yes it's more of a shooters game these days, but so what?.shooting and perimeter offence led attacks is aligned with more skinny/slender and athletic types being drafted and developed in the league.

No one wants to see boring, defensive 65-69 grinding scorelines in games anymore

Both extremes are equally horrendous specially when it’s artificially created by a bunch of defense neutering rule changes of the past 20+ years. At least with those scores in the 60’s like the Heat-Knicks if felt like an intense battle not a chuck till you drop shooting exhibition.

I like most people miss the days when the Showtime Lakers could win the title one year and the Bad Boy Pistons could win it the next with a completely different style and mindset. That’s why that era was the Golden Age, variety, diversity, creativity and physicality which created the most rivalries the sport has ever seen without rules artificially altering the pendulum one way or the other.

You don't think you just remember them having vastly different 'mindsets' and styles because that's how they were marketed? That's exactly how marketing and our brains work--give different personalities and charateristics to things so people can latch onto them and have a favorite and get invested in following them (it's why there are 5 power rangers with different colors, or 4 ninja turtles with exaggerated personalities, or the Spice Girls, N Sync, etc). But if you watch 5 minutes of an actual game from teams you think were massively different in 1988, you're going to find they run the same basic offenses. In the 'golden age of diversity' everyone ran half court offense through deep post-ups, everyone ran actions to get midrange kick-outs off post-ups, and everyone had a perimeter guy who did isos from about 20 feet out. Some teams had better post players or better perimeter guys so leaned one way or another, but the offense was absolutely not less formulaic than what happens now. (It honestly seems a lot less dynamic and more simplified than now, with fewer counters or sub-variations of sets).

I also wonder if people really think there's no diversity in today's game (or if it's just a middle-aged guy sports-talk radio talking point). My guess is some of that is people thinking about like 2 of the best 3 or 4 teams of the whole era when looking back on the 'golden age,' but then focusing on the average RS game in Oct when talking about the modern game. A team like the Nuggets now runs their offense through a 7 foot passing savant who's also unstoppable in the post. (If you were 10 years old now, this would be completely captivating and magical.) And the Celtics run offense with 4 ball-handling guys who can all penetrate and shoot (and another big who can shoot), and they average like 5 swing passes per play. The two offenses don't look similar at all, besides them both using picks and shooting 3s lots of plays (just like the past used post-ups and mid-range curls lots of plays). And both are pretty cool if you're thinking like a kid, 10 year old me would love to play Jokic or through cross court skips like the Celtics or Luka.

Not saying no one should prefer one style over another, or that there aren't some annoying things about the modern game (I do not enjoy today's officiating for one). Just that the ways people glorify the past to validate their gripes about the present are almost always greatly exaggerated and based on things that don't hold up. Basketball has always actually been pretty boring in lots of ways, if you don't like a certain level of repetition and don't like the way that people improvise within structure then it can leave you cold. I generally only watch these days if I really care about the outcome (mostly my team) or if I'm doing some research (often cuz some dumb discussion on here), and I used to watch lots of games with friends and really lock into the competition etc. But I definitely know it's me that's changed.

You just described the reason why those 80’s offenses were more dynamic!

Both teams and multiple others had at least 4/5 players that could create a shot off the dribble with their own different style of attack instead of one guy holding the ball for 20+ seconds while 4 guys stand around the 3 point line waiting for a kick out (rinse and repeat). The offenses were designed to keep it simple going to your strengths which usually meant a post up that sucked in the defense and opened everything from inside out while trying to get the best shot available be it a dunk, layup, 10 footer, 15 footer, 18 footer, 20 footer and yes even a 3 pointer if it was the best option.

Also in those days at least 2 or 3 offensive players were crashing the boards on any shot taken because they were not standing 25 feet away and that allowed for intense battles under the basket that were the catalyst for creating the animosity that spilled over into rivalries over time.

These days any action on the offensive side of the ball whether it being initiated by Jokic or Tatum is to get either a layup or a 3, that’s it! Any other shot in between has been deemed inefficient and should not even be explored by 99% of the players on the floor. That neuters creativity and stifles variety because everybody is trying to copy the same mindset.

When did you ever see in the 80’s/90’s a 3 on 1 fast break with the offensive player coming down the middle completely bypassing the opportunity for a layup/dunk and a passing the ball for a corner 3 brick? Or a player breaking down the defender at the 3 point line and having a completely open 20 footer and ignore it because it’s not a “layup or 3 pointer” and bringing the ball back to dribble for 10 more seconds That’s just pathetic basketball and only mindless dumbed down tik tokers would say “it’s a compex offensive system”

Cutino Mobley broke this down beautifully during the playoffs:

Watch on YouTube

;pp=ygUjQ3V0aW5vIG1vYmVseSBjcml0aWNpemVzIG1vZGVybiBuYmE%3D

Everything that represented basic basketballs fundamentals and principles have been thrown out the window to spam the NBA’s “home run”, the 3 point shot

[LockoutSeason]

NHL ratings are also down. Monday Night Football are also way down but they were competing directly with the World Series, which featured the two biggest teams in MLB.

Also there’s an election coming up.

[mg]

A 6yr span was the golden era and everything else sucked?

Interesting way to look at it I guess

Just my opinion but the "golden era" was 1979-1999 which spanned the careers of Bird, Magic, and Jordan with a bunch of other fantastic players such as Hakeem, Kareem, Dr J, Shaq, and young Kobe sprinkled in.