NBA viewership down

[basketballRob]

Teams like the Warriors, Lakers, and Suns are on multiple times a week, and they aren't good. No one wants to watch gray-haired Draymond play.

Sent from my SM-G781U using RealGM mobile app

[elchengue20]

Too many nearly meaningless games and younger generations have too many entratainment options, it's not that complicated.

We can talk about number of 3s all day but the issues are much deeper than playstyle.

Also less timeouts and/or shorter ones would help a lot, you have to spend 2+ hours to watch a 40min game, people moves on with another thing.

Not finding replacement for Lebron/KD/Curry it's another problem, specially for the American audience. Ja and Zion bustin was a big blow.

[Drakeem]

1) With Lebron, Steph and KD fading away.... the NBA has no new, exciting young stars that fans can connect with, i.e., the Hollywood star model.

Are you serious right now? Fans can connect and relate better to LeBron and KD than they can with the stars of today like Luka and Jokic for example?

Crazy athletic freaks are more connectable for fans than guys who don’t have elite or even good athleticism (by NBA standards) yet became top players through pure skill and talent?

Yeah im sorry but im not buying that.

People connect to personalities just as much as playstyle. Even as a fellow Balkan, most Americans aren't going to connect the same to someone who grew up there vs an American that displays American values, interests, etc.

[NBA4Lyfe]

Ant is probably the young star with personality, but he plays in Minnesota.

LeBron played in Cleveland and the league had no problem making him the face of the nba. So that type of mindset is just foolish because Minnesota is bigger than Cleveland in terms of market size too.

LeBron was also covered in high school as if he was going to be the next MJ (which he basically was).

The NBA (and NBA media) have put in very little to no effort in building up new stars. It's why every story is still about LeBron, Steph, KD etc.

Some of the issue is that the new NBA stars are mostly non-Americans. The NBA media (and typical American NBA fans) don't want to have non-Americans as the face of an American basketball league.

the sad part is you would think LeBron would be a huge ratings draw with how much he uses his sports agency to pay media guys at espn and fs1 to constantly mention his name. LeBron is a ratings flop unless he is going againist players like durant/curry. see 2020 finals and 2007 nba finals tv ratings

the whole bronny james thing turned off a lot of hardcore nba fans..

lebron announced he was leaving social media for a while, and LITERALLY no one cared. Could you imagine jordan announcing he was leaving in that same way. Lol their would 24/7 news coverage discussing jordan. Similar to how when Magic retired in 1991

Nobody really cares about lebron, and the fact that people keep scapegoating his teammates and coaches just makes it look like espn and fs1 are backing toxic player that every non-bias casual fan can. If it wasnt gonna be dangelo russell, then it would have been dejounte murray or dennis schroder.. lebron claims he was a point but cant play off-the ball.

[Michael Bradley]

I mentioned this years ago as something the league was going to regret, and it's been mentioned in this thread already, but the biggest thing is the NBA marketing stars instead of teams. The only way to build diehard sports fans is by getting them to cheer the laundry. The NFL does this perfectly. MLB does this as well but is more regional in popularity. The NBA is the one league that wants you to watch the stars, and the franchises are the afterthought. It was a horrible marketing strategy 4-5 years ago, and now they are starting to see what happens with that strategy. Players have a shelf life. They retire, they get hurt, they decline. You don't want to build LeBron fans, you want to build Cavs fans (for example) who will pass that love on to their kids. Building a sports league any other way simply not going to work long-term. Gen Z/Alpha are going to be very tough to sustain as sports fan, but you have a much better chance to do it if they fall in love with the laundry. If they just like the sport, or just like a certain player or two, then it might have short-term benefit for the league, but long-term it's not the way you want the sport marketed. Combine that with the unattractive on court product, and you can understand why interest (at least in terms of watching games) is down.

The NBA needs to do something to make the game more appealing to watch. I don't know what the answer is, but hopefully they are seriously searching for it.

[ItsDanger]

Players should take responsibility onto themselves about increasing popularity. As example, Alex Pereira in UFC became more popular organically through performance and social media yet he doesn't even speak English. Most of these players DGAF because they really don't have to.

I can watch anyone chuck 3s, its not really exciting in volume. I became a bigger fan of NBA when I finally got satellite access and could watch non national games. Kemp/Payton in Seattle especially.

[LLJ]

IMO it's about the feast or famine swings of the star system and how they market them. When there are megastars like Jordan and Kobe and Bird and Magic...they can really connect with audiences. And today there really aren't any stars in their prime that have captured the public's imagination in the same way. LeBron is old, Steph is old, and guys like Doncic and Jokic and Giannis and SGA just aren't superstars at the same level of popularity, either because lack of proper marketing or those guys just aren't capturing the public's imagination enough or there's a perception that the "best players" in the NBA today just aren't THAT MUCH better than the rest of the league. You'd think that's a good thing but under the star system the NBA adopts, it's dependent on 2-4 absolutely transcendent players who can single handedly lift a mediocre team to contention and everyone else being underdogs.

[IG2]

IMO it's about the feast or famine swings of the star system and how they market them. When there are megastars like Jordan and Kobe and Bird and Magic...they can really connect with audiences. And today there really aren't any stars in their prime that have captured the public's imagination in the same way. LeBron is old, Steph is old, and guys like Doncic and Jokic and Giannis and SGA just aren't superstars at the same level of popularity, either because lack of proper marketing or those guys just aren't capturing the public's imagination enough or there's a perception that the "best players" in the NBA today just aren't THAT MUCH better than the rest of the league. You'd think that's a good thing but under the star system the NBA adopts, it's dependent on 2-4 absolutely transcendent players who can single handedly lift a mediocre team to contention and everyone else being underdogs.

Ding ding ding

The NBA has always been, and always will be, only as strong as the popularity of it's 2-3 best players at the top. They carry the league. They bring in the casual viewer. The casual viewer neither cares nor understands the game's nuances. Star power and storylines is all that matters. Doesn't mean the league shouldn't fix its on-court issues, but the current apathy towards the NBA is 80% due to America not at all being enamored by the league's non-American elite (Jokic, Giannis, Luka, Embiid, SGA) than anything else. And it's a shame because those guys are amazing, but they simply don't excite the casual viewer.

Nothing can be done about that though. So control what we can control to enhance the viewing pleasure of those who are watching. Reducing 3's and increasing physicality are DUHs. League already did the latter last year mid-season, but offenses are so good, more of it is needed.

[52-12-7]

Force lediddy into retirement and the ratings will come back up. America is tired of his self tooting manufactured legacy and all of his bs narratives he tries to force upon us. All of his "I'm my own CEO", buddy buddy super teams, "i fell on the sword for the good of the league", promoting political agenda, and his white knighting of Black matters (while being super quite on Diddy matters) is sickening and shouldn't belong on a sporting platform.

Sent from my SM-S918U using Tapatalk

[mysticOscar]

Haven't watched a game this season. My care factor is almost 0.

It has been dropping every year. Main reason is that I feel a lot of the player's are just a spoilt bunch and the league catering to there every whim.

Silver is a horrible commissioner who is too soft and just let the players basically run thr league.

Now the league are handcuffed to quickly turn this around

[joeschmo]

Haven't watched a game this season. My care factor is almost 0.

It has been dropping every year. Main reason is that I feel a lot of the player's are just a spoilt bunch and the league catering to there every whim.

Silver is a horrible commissioner who is too soft and just let the players basically run thr league.

Now the league are handcuffed to quickly turn this around

Completely agree with this and also no longer watching games. they won't be handcuffed once the revenue declines.

[Mephariel]

Force lediddy into retirement and the ratings will come back up. America is tired of his self tooting manufactured legacy and all of his bs narratives he tries to force upon us. All of his "I'm my own CEO", buddy buddy super teams, "i fell on the sword for the good of the league", promoting political agenda, and his white knighting of Black matters (while being super quite on Diddy matters) is sickening and shouldn't belong on a sporting platform.

Sent from my SM-S918U using Tapatalk

I don't see what Black Live Matters have to do with Diddy. Why does he need to talk about Diddy?

[XtremeDunkz]

Players are too friendly. There's zero intensity.

Game style is boring. Looks like I'm watching an open run at the local gym instead of the best league in the world.

[Chokic]

There’s a lot of games. people in America are actually just less into sports than the generation before. There’s a lot more variety of what people are interested in.

The prior generation everyone shared the platform of how games would be watched (aka tv).

More options doesn’t make more people watch it. It’s simple to understand.

Anyone under 25 isn’t watching entire games anymore they will randomly pop in and out of games via streaming and apps.

Bingo. There's just way oversaturation of content on everything right now online.

Another factor is the socio economic current state of the country. Ppl just aren't as invested in sports as they used to because many Americans are struggling right now with real life problems that go way beyond following sports.

[Bob Ross]

Start the effin games on time

[GopherIt!]

Force lediddy into retirement and the ratings will come back up. America is tired of his self tooting manufactured legacy and all of his bs narratives he tries to force upon us. All of his "I'm my own CEO", buddy buddy super teams, "i fell on the sword for the good of the league", promoting political agenda, and his white knighting of Black matters (while being super quite on Diddy matters) is sickening and shouldn't belong on a sporting platform.

Sent from my SM-S918U using Tapatalk

I don't see what Black Live Matters have to do with Diddy. Why does he need to talk about Diddy?

The Diddler? Diddy done did do it.

[azcatz11]

108 3pt attempt combined in the Celtics - Bulls game? No one wants to watch that trash. Baseball changed the infield shift rule. Silver needs to grow a sack

[dantas]

I think the biggest problem is a taboo subject: there are a lot of rigged games.

It doesn't make sense that there's so much balance in the league. The normal thing would be for very good teams, like the Celtics, the Nuggets etc., to have more than 65 wins a year. And several other teams with streaks of 20 or 18 defeats in a row. So there would be a much greater imbalance in the league table.

Many teams do take part in rigged matches. You can feel it when the intensity on the floor is zero. It's like kids playing in the park. Well, there are 82 games, so many are insignificant to the overall picture.

Many of these players are super friends and many others bet on a regular basis, which raises more suspicions.

NBA is a competition with many rigged games.

[Duke4life831]

I have seen that this has started to pickup a lot of traction. Seeing a lot of videos on YouTube of people talking about the big drop in ratings. And I’m not talking just random trolls, like long time big names like Dan Patrick and others like that.

And again you can’t just blame illegal streaming or young people don’t watch sports or stuff like that. The NFL is having no issues with ratings, I think I read this past MLB playoff was like a 5 year high or something like that.

There is no doubt a growing disconnect with the casual US fan and the NBA. It also doesn’t help you have former players with huge names like Chuck and Shaq, flat out saying they don’t like the current product either.

Again not saying no one likes the current NBA or anything like that. I know there are plenty on here who say they really like the current product. But there is no denying that there is a growing disconnect with the casual US sports fan.

[bubonicphoniks]

You guys are crazy. Every time the NBA markets these role players as super stars it devalues the term more and more. It's ok to have just a few or even barely any at all.

But ok. Keep mapping out these babies as superstars. Yall can't just let things happen over time.

This is what happens when you let espn tell you what to think.