NBA viewership down

[azcatz11]

Cable costs $200/month. Nobody can afford to pay that **** anymore, especially with the cost of living being as high as it is now.

Yep.

I pay $150 a month for internet and YT TV is another $90 a month. My car insurance is up 76% the past 2 years.

Most of us are going broke watching these games

[NBA4Lyfe]

This video shows how terrible the defense is in the NBA. Why watch RS games where the effort is so lackluster.

Watch on YouTube

The ringer just listed their top 25 lol. Luka being number 2 is comical

[bkkrh]

If this was the issue, then I think we would be seeing drops in ratings even for football. An NFL game is 3 hours long and their ratings aren’t dropping. Thursday Night Football which is the worst product the NFL produces, is seeing all time high ratings so far this year for Amazon.

A football season has 16 games and every regular season game is meaningful in the sense that it impacts Playoff placings and participation and the season is a lot shorter, less teams make the playoffs while the league has more teams and playoff rounds only consists of one game. So you simply get a lot less chances to watch a specific team each season.

Again though, all of my friends used to be huge NBA fans. None of them even watch the playoffs or finals anymore. I used to get League Pass every year. I’m not just saying this, you can go back to my posts years ago talking about how I thought League Pass on Amazon was good and then I switched it to YouTube TV and thought it was even better. I don’t get League Pass anymore, I barely even watch anymore. And it’s the same amount of games it’s always been.

This argument would make sense if NBA kept adding games to the season and therefore the drop off of viewership came after that.

This idea that huge chunks of people (based off the big drop off in ratings) stopped watching because of illegal streaming or lack of scarcity, I highly doubt has much effect. I stopped watching because the game got boring to me. Even though for years I told my friends they needed to watch Jokic, they didn’t because they said it got boring.

I totally believe you the question is just, is this completely related to Basketball? During the late 90s and early 2000s I watched pretty much everything about Football in Europe. German 1st and 2nd division, plus the league my team was in. Often summaries of the same games multiple times during the same week. Everything I could see about other European top leagues. Summaries of National team games that didn't matter to me. Went to live games on a regular basis. The last few years I follow the results of my hometown team, that's it. Don't know most players any more. Watched no game besides the final game of the last European Cup. Can't say that Football is bad now, the games are actually more entertaining now.

Same with video games. I have probably 100 games on Steam I haven't even played once, just decided to not renew Gamepass, since don't play the games anyhow. I have bought some games twice on different systems that I haven't started once. In the 90s and 2000s I read like 2-3 video game magazines each month and played pretty much through every demo.

I was a big Hip Hop fan in the 90s and 2000s and had a huge Vinyl and CD collection. Knew about every new release, some obscure underground Rappers from Houston and so on. Then I got more into the actual music used into samples. Went crazy with Miles Davis, bought Bootleg CDs of some badly recorded 70s live recordings. Could tell you in 10 seconds the complete band lineup by listening to the way they played and just knowing things like without even having heard the drummer yet, that it had to be Jack DeJohnette, since it's clearly Gary Bartz on the Saxophone and he had left the band already for more than a year until Al Foster replaced DeJohnette on drums. Today I check every few Months for some new stuff that got released, just enjoy music casually and have no clue at all about Hip Hop. Sometimes I click on a new song from a 90s guy that has like a few thousand views on Youtube and see people going crazy in the comments with "Whooo, Hip Hop is finally back!", "Best track of the last decade", "Young whatever and Lil Idontknow will never make a track like this", think it's kinda alright and never listen to that track again.

And I can give you multiple more examples. I can blame it partially on Internet taking over, being overfloated with additional content and options, focusing more on career and work, but I know it's not the full truth.

Because I see the exact same thing with my 10 year older brother in law, my 3 year older cousin, my 5 year younger cousin and my dad. My younger cousin turned from a Heavy Metal Guitar player to serious Blues Guitar player to now playing some early 1900s style banjo music on dance events. My dad is going to some "old people events" where they play music he made fun of for as long as I knew him, he still isn't a fan, but now thinks you can still have a good time there.

The world changes, people change, interests change. That's pretty much the case for most people. So yeah, maybe your buddies liked Basketball in the past and lost interest because of the different style of play, maybe they also wouldn't watch today if prime MJ, Kobe and AI would be playing at the same time in the league and things were exactly like when they were fans.

I'd say that younger generations have to a lower percentage interest to regularly follow sports and see it more as an event thing. It's cool to watch world cups, or a big UFC or boxing event, but I rarely meet people in their 20s that generally say "I'm into watching boxing, football, and so on". I don't say it doesn't exist, but going again with my personal experience (in my early 40s now), when I was in school, as well as later on when I had my first jobs and there was a group of guys together, I could have a conversation about football and there was maybe one person that was the "weirdo" who had no clue or just some basic knowledge. People knew players, how teams were doing and so on.

Now it is definitely a lot less people and actually a lot of younger people often know more specific things like good players, because they play FIFA or NBA2K. They don't watch actual Basketball games, more likely content creators that play 2k like Chris Smoove or CashNasty, or general Basketball content creators like Tristan Jass. And a lot of that is probably related to the way media is consumed.

I started watching Sports with my dad. I learned about Basketball from my sister and my cousin. Now it's down to the algorythm after you found an initial interest. You start watching a 2k Youtuber to improve your gameplay, then you see him playing some real hoops and enjoy that content, the algorythm will recommend you other Youtube Basketballers, not Shawn Kemp's 50 greatest Dunks, or Bulls vs Knicks 91 Playoff Highlights. The content you watch is between 7 to 20 minutes, you don't even consider watching a game that takes 2 hours. I still remember how long it took me to get used to switching from listening to Hip Hop tracks that last between 3 to 5 minutes to some spaced out, half an hour long Miles Davis tracks that have a 4 minute intro.

[elchengue20]

If this was the issue, then I think we would be seeing drops in ratings even for football. An NFL game is 3 hours long and their ratings aren’t dropping. Thursday Night Football which is the worst product the NFL produces, is seeing all time high ratings so far this year for Amazon.

A football season has 16 games and every regular season game is meaningful in the sense that it impacts Playoff placings and participation and the season is a lot shorter, less teams make the playoffs while the league has more teams and playoff rounds only consists of one game. So you simply get a lot less chances to watch a specific team each season.

Again though, all of my friends used to be huge NBA fans. None of them even watch the playoffs or finals anymore. I used to get League Pass every year. I’m not just saying this, you can go back to my posts years ago talking about how I thought League Pass on Amazon was good and then I switched it to YouTube TV and thought it was even better. I don’t get League Pass anymore, I barely even watch anymore. And it’s the same amount of games it’s always been.

This argument would make sense if NBA kept adding games to the season and therefore the drop off of viewership came after that.

This idea that huge chunks of people (based off the big drop off in ratings) stopped watching because of illegal streaming or lack of scarcity, I highly doubt has much effect. I stopped watching because the game got boring to me. Even though for years I told my friends they needed to watch Jokic, they didn’t because they said it got boring.

Normally I't's called "growin up".

[lakerz12]

For example, 22 year old Jalen Johnson is sitting out with lower leg inflammation.

Lower leg inflammation?

We used to call that soreness.

He is 22 years old. This is what is making the league a joke to me.

Make the season 50 games.

Stop taking peoples’ time and money and not even putting the product on the floor.

Here is a link to a 17 year analysis of injury reports from NBA teams starting in 1988. Inflammations rank as the 2nd most common reported injury with 21.8%.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3445097/

From the article:

Conclusion:

Professional athletes in the NBA experience a high rate of game-related injuries. Patellofemoral inflammation is the most significant problem in terms of days lost in competition, whereas ankle sprains are the most common injury. True ligamentous injuries of the knee were surprisingly rare. Importantly, player demographics were not correlated with injury rates. Further investigation is necessary regarding the consequences and sport-specific treatment of various injuries in NBA players.

Your point?

Sounds like the perfect label for a rest day.

We all know starting players of the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s were more likely to play every game and play through minor injuries.

In today’s game, the emphasis is on playing as few regular season games as possible.

[Lalouie]

the resemblance is jarring.....

[bkkrh]

For example, 22 year old Jalen Johnson is sitting out with lower leg inflammation.

Lower leg inflammation?

We used to call that soreness.

He is 22 years old. This is what is making the league a joke to me.

Make the season 50 games.

Stop taking peoples’ time and money and not even putting the product on the floor.

Here is a link to a 17 year analysis of injury reports from NBA teams starting in 1988. Inflammations rank as the 2nd most common reported injury with 21.8%.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3445097/

From the article:

Conclusion:

Professional athletes in the NBA experience a high rate of game-related injuries. Patellofemoral inflammation is the most significant problem in terms of days lost in competition, whereas ankle sprains are the most common injury. True ligamentous injuries of the knee were surprisingly rare. Importantly, player demographics were not correlated with injury rates. Further investigation is necessary regarding the consequences and sport-specific treatment of various injuries in NBA players.

Your point?

Sounds like the perfect label for a rest day.

We all know starting players of the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s were more likely to play every game and play through minor injuries.

In today’s game, the emphasis is on playing as few regular season games as possible.

That inflammation is for a long time a pretty common Basketball injury. Good chance that players are more likely to sit out a game because of it today, question is if it's more related to them being soft or teams understanding by now that it's better to sit out and recover, than to have a longer duration they are impacted or take the risk for things to get worse.

Might be wrong but from my memory injuries were also not disclosed that much in detail. Meaning you heard that a person was out day to day with a minor leg injury, without really knowing what the exact issue is.

[John Murdoch]

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.

Great post here , pretty much agree . The olympics showed us a glimpse of what it could look like if they used FIBA refs that actually swallowed the whiste and let them play . I really dont wanna change rules to fix the 3 spamming tbh, id rather just allow heavier ball pressure/handchecking before we mess with the OG rules because alot of records would be skewed if we push the 3pt line back or whatever

[Karate Diop]

I mean... The product hasn't been entertaining recently...

It's better than the last couple of years imo

Eh, to each their own. Among my friends group most have largely phased out the NBA because of the bland, repetitive style of play and neutering of defenses...

To be fair, we're not the current demographic that the league is marketing towards though...

[lakerz12]

Here is a link to a 17 year analysis of injury reports from NBA teams starting in 1988. Inflammations rank as the 2nd most common reported injury with 21.8%.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3445097/

From the article:

Conclusion:

Professional athletes in the NBA experience a high rate of game-related injuries. Patellofemoral inflammation is the most significant problem in terms of days lost in competition, whereas ankle sprains are the most common injury. True ligamentous injuries of the knee were surprisingly rare. Importantly, player demographics were not correlated with injury rates. Further investigation is necessary regarding the consequences and sport-specific treatment of various injuries in NBA players.

Your point?

Sounds like the perfect label for a rest day.

We all know starting players of the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s were more likely to play every game and play through minor injuries.

In today’s game, the emphasis is on playing as few regular season games as possible.

That inflammation is for a long time a pretty common Basketball injury. Good chance that players are more likely to sit out a game because of it today, question is if it's more related to them being soft or teams understanding by now that it's better to sit out and recover, than to have a longer duration they are impacted or take the risk for things to get worse.

Might be wrong but from my memory injuries were also not disclosed that much in detail. Meaning you heard that a person was out day to day with a minor leg injury, without really knowing what the exact issue is.

Either way, will you deny that guys sit out more games today?

That was one example. Maybe a bad one. The point wasn’t to focus on inflammation.

The point was guys sit out today more than in the past.

And they should consider shortening the season.

[KingFox]

Eh, even LeBron watches the game illegally all these numbers are misleading

[Lakers In 5]

Read on Twitter

It takes a special kind of delusion to say something like this. So disconnected and out of touch with the world of the average man, it's ridiculous. I do think the viewership numbers are skewed, but it has nothing to do with the aforementioned reasons. It's because people are almost forced to stream games illegally.

You need about a bazillion subscriptions to be able to watch the games. The prices of said subscriptions are incredibly high, of course. That's no problem, though. Just get league pass, and you'll be able to watch your favorite team play every night. Oh wait, it's blacked out. If, however, you wish to pay that amount of money, the product you're getting is often subpar. Ads, time-outs, free throws, some more ads, free throws, gambling propaganda, ads, and let's not forget the ads.

These games take way too long to complete, and one is looking at their television or other devices for about 3 hours to watch 48 minutes of the product they wish to see. I do not have the exact stats and I would be very interested in seeing them, but I would assume the 4th quarters take about 30 to 45 minutes to complete. Not to mention the way in which the zebras affect the game too, with the most egregious calls that are worthy of a firing in any other field of expertise.

That is just assuming the players show up too, because some, not all, love to sit in street clothes.

[bkkrh]

Your point?

Sounds like the perfect label for a rest day.

We all know starting players of the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s were more likely to play every game and play through minor injuries.

In today’s game, the emphasis is on playing as few regular season games as possible.

That inflammation is for a long time a pretty common Basketball injury. Good chance that players are more likely to sit out a game because of it today, question is if it's more related to them being soft or teams understanding by now that it's better to sit out and recover, than to have a longer duration they are impacted or take the risk for things to get worse.

Might be wrong but from my memory injuries were also not disclosed that much in detail. Meaning you heard that a person was out day to day with a minor leg injury, without really knowing what the exact issue is.

Either way, will you deny that guys sit out more games today?

That was one example. Maybe a bad one. The point wasn’t to focus on inflammation.

The point was guys sit out today more than in the past.

And they should consider shortening the season.

Yes of course, players are sitting out more. Super obvious just based on the fact of how few players play in all 82 games. The question is just why that´s the case. Personally I think that´s more on the teams than on the players. With players you´d assume that at least players fighting for a starting or rotation spot, or a big contract would grasp at every chance to play.

From a team perspective I assume it´s more a mindset of being cautios and careful, since players are at this point investments that go in some cases in the 100s of Millions of dollars. Maybe team doctors know by now that players like Penny Hardaway or Isaiah Thomas wouldn´t have been impacted as badly by their injuries if they would have sat out right away. Or at least everybody is aware of Kevin Durant´s achilles tear in the finals when he came back. He sat out a full season after that. Understandable that he wanted to risk it all to win a title, it´s of course another story if we talk about a regular season game.

Can also just be a numbers game. Better to have a player miss 2-3 games and have him back at 100%, compared to having a player play 5-6 games at 70%-80% of his skill with some minor injury. Teams are evaluating a lot of data now, so that might have just been the logical conclusion they came up with.

So the question is, would less games fix it? If teams just have the approach I just mentioned not really, they would still sit players to not risk things if there are signs of injuries. In case it is players just getting more injured in general, or related to the amount of games,then less games would of course help.

Either way, I see it as very unlikely that it will happen, even if it would be the right solution. Simply based on the fact that the NBA just signed a big new TV deal, that will include agreements on amounts of games that are available for broadcasts during certain days and months, Teams not wanting to decrease revenue by having less home games and the NBA being involved with gambling, where less games will also mean less revenue.

[bledredwine]

I mean... The product hasn't been entertaining recently...

It's better than the last couple of years imo

Eh, to each their own. Among my friends group most have largely phased out the NBA because of the bland, repetitive style of play and neutering of defenses...

To be fair, we're not the current demographic that the league is marketing towards though...

This is the thing though. Watch the crowd in the 90s. The Bulls were prime time. Everyone watched, regardless of age. Heck, I visited my grandfather in Missouri who was never a basketball fan and he wanted to watch.

If it’s interesting, people of all ages watch it, just like soccer has been all around the world.

[Jamaaliver]

Question from a middle aged man who believes the Commissioner has a point...

How are any of the issues listed below any different from last season when viewing numbers were better?

Or the season prior to that?

Spoiler:

Read on Twitter

It takes a special kind of delusion to say something like this.

It's because:

• People are almost forced to stream games illegally.
  
• You need about a bazillion subscriptions to be able to watch the games.
  
• These games take way too long to complete, and one is looking at their television or other devices for about 3 hours to watch 48 minutes of the product they wish to see.
  
• That is just assuming the players show up too, because some, not all, love to sit in street clothes.

[chuck_wagon44]

The product is very bad. It's literally just shooting threes every play.
On top of this, the star players don't even play most of the games. So nobody is going to plan around a game that is going to be featuring no namers

[celtics543]

I think part of it is that a generation of fans grew up and now has other responsibilities. For me personally I used to watch everything, I don't think I missed a Celtics game from when 2001 - 2019. Then I got married, had kids, and my evenings are spent putting kids to bed and maybe watching a few minutes of a game or hanging with my wife before we go to bed.

Now I know the argument is that every generation goes through this but I think the change is that younger generations aren't watching the game at the same level older generations did. The Gen Z and below are more likely to watch highlights and play the video games without actually watching the game in real time.

So boomers are dying, gen x are still watching because their kids are older and they have time again, millennials are in the throws of parenthood and climbing corporate ladders so less disposable time to watch (not to mention disposable income), and the youngest generations aren't interested in watching whole games, just seeing highlights and results.

It's in all reality a mix of all the issues mentioned in this thread but I think this is a big part of the ratings problem. Low ratings but high popularity on social media only really makes sense with this explanation.

Football is different because carving out 3 hours a week to watch one game is a much smaller ask. Especially when those games are seen as more important and can be more easily be made into Sunday afternoon events.

[scrabbarista]

This video shows how terrible the defense is in the NBA. Why watch RS games where the effort is so lackluster.

Watch on YouTube

That's nightmarishly bad, but

A) it's one player in one game, and

B) I was watching the fourth quarter live, and it was pretty clear Luka was injured. They probably would've won if he didn't play, so he still deserves some blame for that effort if he was going to play, but yeah: he was hurting. He missed games right after this.

[Jamaaliver]

Read on Twitter

[Jamaaliver]

<sigh> Well...this should definitely help ratings.

Read on Twitter