NBA viewership down

[Hornet Mania]

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Engagement is nice, but can they turn that into profit comparable to programs that bring in lots of viewers to TV broadcasts? That's my only concern about the focus on social media engagement.

TV stations pay the NBA to be on their network, so they profit from that. Live games require tickets, so they profit from that. Clothing companies pay the NBA for the license to create authentic apparel, so they profit from that. The NBA, or fans, post content which Facebook/Insta/X gains ad revenue from...how exactly does the NBA profit from that? Can social channels get a cut of ads like Youtube creators do?

I suppose there are other downstream benefits, like selling more clothing or licensed video games than you would have otherwise, but I wonder if it's the same level of direct revenue as the old network broadcast and ticket sales models.

[wco81]

Put it this way, ESPN will be dumping baseball after this year because they deemed the rights fees too high.

They will be paying 4 times as much for the NBA broadcast fees as they were paying for the MLB games.

[K N U C K L E S]

Something else I notice about the NBA is It also seems like the league has no idea what to do or how to market players who don't come into the league with huge pre-league/international hype or recognition. All of the "faces" or "marketable" players all have that, from Lebron, KD, Steph, to Zion/Ja/Wemby. Even Draymond was known before he came into the league because of his college career. It's like the league relied heavily on college basketball for years to do that for them. The one and done probably has hurt the league in this way because there haven't been that many phenom freshmen as you would think there would be. The most recent I can remember that happening for the league is with Zion, Ja, and probably Trae Young but it's too far in between.

This maybe one reason why the WNBA is only going to get bigger because since women can't declare until age 22 they have to stay in college where basically the biggest stars and best players can grow in stature for 3 to 4 years. By the time they get to the WNBA they're pretty well known. Look at Caitlin Clark or even previous players like Taurasi, Parker, Moore, Diggins. By the time Juju Watkins gets to the league she'll probably have a pretty big following that will carry over. Add to the fact that women's college basketball isn't just completely dominated by just 2 or 3 teams anymore and they'll probably have more stars spread out on good teams.

Men's college basketball is in the process of being destroyed by NIL and the transfer portal, which will cause Duke and UNC to get the final 4 EVERY year, which will will make the men's side as completely uncompetitive as the woman's side where UCONN gets to the final 4 EVERY season. Look what happed to Miami. They were very competitive with the legacy top shelf teams and got to the final 4 2 years ago. Before this season, all the good players that didn't go pro transferred away to schools where they can get more NIL money. Then Larrañaga, one of the best coaches in in the sport, quit in the middle of the season because he was fed up with the afformentioned destruction.