NBA Fanbase growth by attendance

[penbeast0]

Credit to:
https://www.apbr.org/attendance.html


Average NBA attendance
1951 3,576
1960 5,008 +40%
1970 7,563 +51%
1980 11,017 +46%
1990 15.690 +42%
2000 16,870 +8%
2010 17,150 +2%
2020 17.759 +3% *statica.com


There have been many comments made about how the NBA is so much more popular today, and how the 1960s and/or 1970s were poor eras for NBA popularity growth. To some extent that is true due to a lack of TV coverage, but in terms of live fans, the actual numbers tell a very different story.

Since 1950, the annual growth rate was between 40 and 51% for the first 40 years of the league with the much maligned 1970s actually having the highest growth rate at 51%. The growth rate for the 1990s dropped drastically to only 8% and for the last 20 years it's only been 2-3% per decade.

[Chuck Everett]

Could it also be that arenas were much smaller during the league's infancy? A lot of teams played in college basketball arenas for a long time.

[penbeast0]

Arenas get replaced with bigger ones; the growth is pretty consistent until 1990 then it drastically slows. Maybe they decided bigger arenas wouldn't fill consistently, maybe they quit caring as much about attendance due to the size of the TV pot.


Or maybe when Bird and Magic retired, the live audience in the USA quit growing with no new charismatic players replacing them .

[Owly]

So
1) Isn't the growth between 60 and 70 the sixties, not the 70s?
2) As you state the growth is outside the arena, TV and online.
3 )My understanding, limited as it is is that stadia stopped growing and became about boxes. A 50,000-100,000 capacity not always full stadium ... with what are likely to be bad views (and/or effectively just watching a screen ... doesn't seem like a win for anyone. Though limiting supply might be thought to lead to access/gentrification issues?

[penbeast0]

So
1) Isn't the growth between 60 and 70 the sixties, not the 70s?
2) As you state the growth is outside the arena, TV and online.
3 )My understanding, limited as it is is that stadia stopped growing and became about boxes. A 50,000-100,000 capacity not always full stadium ... with what are likely to be bad views (and/or effectively just watching a screen ... doesn't seem like a win for anyone. Though limiting supply might be thought to lead to access/gentrification issues?

1. You are correct
3. Quite possibly

[Doctor MJ]

Could it also be that arenas were much smaller during the league's infancy? A lot of teams played in college basketball arenas for a long time.

This is definitely a thing to be considered, but I'll say this:

https://theathletic.com/2943035/2021/11/09/book-excerpt-the-old-fashioned-chutzpah-that-made-the-big-east-the-biggest-show-in-new-york-city/ the Madison Square Garden was regularly hosting college basketball games with an attendance of 16,000. This ended up inspiring the MSG-centered NIT which was the biggest event in basketball until gambling corruption took it down.

This to say that while teams have certainly played in smaller venues in between the '30s and now, it's not because it had never occurred to people that you could get that many people in one place to watch basketball. I'd say in general that any team that was regularly selling out a much smaller venue would look to move to a bigger one, and thus while there was some historical lag between NBA popularity and attendance, I do think it's a decent proxy.

[Cavsfansince84]

Its much more about ticket prices nowadays in all the major sports. Outside of cfb where schools keep adding more seats and boxes. Which also simultaneously makes it harder for a segment of the fanbase to attend when you factor in the price of parking and food on top of tickets. I do recall that the price of a playoff ticket in 1989 for a Cavs game was $20 which was a decent seat. I can only imagine what it was in the 15-18 years.

[Doctor MJ]

Its much more about ticket prices nowadays in all the major sports. Outside of cfb where schools keep adding more seats and boxes. Which also simultaneously makes it harder for a segment of the fanbase to attend when you factor in the price of parking and food on top of tickets. I do recall that the price of a playoff ticket in 1989 for a Cavs game was $20 which was a decent seat. I can only imagine what it was in the 15-18 years.

I think it's actually much more about non-attendance-based money now.

[Cavsfansince84]

Its much more about ticket prices nowadays in all the major sports. Outside of cfb where schools keep adding more seats and boxes. Which also simultaneously makes it harder for a segment of the fanbase to attend when you factor in the price of parking and food on top of tickets. I do recall that the price of a playoff ticket in 1989 for a Cavs game was $20 which was a decent seat. I can only imagine what it was in the 15-18 years.

I think it's actually much more about non-attendance-based money now.

That as well. I was just more addressing the relevance of the attendance side of it.

[DQuinn1575]

Credit to:
https://www.apbr.org/attendance.html


Average NBA attendance
1951 3,576
1960 5,008 +40%
1970 7,563 +51%
1980 11,017 +46%
1990 15.690 +42%
2000 16,870 +8%
2010 17,150 +2%
2020 17.759 +3% *statica.com


There have been many comments made about how the NBA is so much more popular today, and how the 1960s and/or 1970s were poor eras for NBA popularity growth. To some extent that is true due to a lack of TV coverage, but in terms of live fans, the actual numbers tell a very different story.

Since 1950, the annual growth rate was between 40 and 51% for the first 40 years of the league with the much maligned 1970s actually having the highest growth rate at 51%. The growth rate for the 1990s dropped drastically to only 8% and for the last 20 years it's only been 2-3% per decade.

So for the growth to continue around 40% you would need something like:
2000 22,000
2010 31,000
2020 43,000

[penbeast0]

Sounds right. Salaries and TV revenues have grown faster than that would be my guess, maybe average ticket prices too, not really sure.