KyRo23 wrote:Duke4life831 wrote:I was talking to my dad yesterday. He’s the definition of a casual sports fan outside of the NFL. He usually will watch the playoffs for both MLB and NBA when they come on.
We were talking about the start of the US Open and I brought up the Finals. He had no clue they were even going on.
I just think the NBA and ESPN are just really bad at marketing the NBA. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fan of the product on the court anymore. But I think that affects hardcore fans, far more than casuals. I think they’re inability to capture casual fans interest is a big issue.
Do you think it's harder or easier to market these kinds of things in todays world? Not many people that I know have cable anymore and just watch apps. I know for me, I only turn on the channels that have the NBA on when I know they are on, so it is rare that I'm watching regular TV to see ads
I remember as a kid and into my 20s always having ESPN on and random channels where you would see the finals ads. The black eyed peas "lets get it started" 2004 NBA finals commercials every second. I wouldn't even know where to see these nowadays and I think TV aps have had some negative effects on how sports market their games
I do think there is an aspect to this 100%. No doubt back in the day it was easier to market these things when the vast majority of eyes were all watching less things at once.
For instance I just looked up Friends average viewership. In the 2nd season, it averaged 31 million people watching per episode. Put an advertisement there and a few different channels and your advertisement reached 50+ million people.
Today everything is much more spread out. And for sure that has a huge impact on all of this.
But I do think they need to figure out something. I get not comparing it to football because that is just so ingrained into the US culture. But I saw someone else on here say this and I think it’s true.
The NBA is turning into a regional sport just like the MLB. These Finals are averaging roughly just under 9 million people per game. Thats on par for the 2023 World Series average (9.1 million per game). And that was a series between the Rangers and Diamondbacks. When MLB gets a big time matchup like last year (NY vs LA), it averaged over 15 million people per game. You have to go back to pre COVID to find a NBA finals game with that average.
So I will definitely concede that marketing to a wide consumer base nowadays is much more difficult than it was back in the 90s and stuff. But with that said, I also think the NBA (ESPN/TNT) does a horrible job of marketing their stars. Because the people you want to market to are the casual sports fans. I would be shocked if casual sports fans have ever heard the name Tyrese Haliburton. The NBA (ESPN/TNT) don’t seem to talk about players, until they have to. I used this example before. But it was an ESPN sideline reporter during the Nuggets championship run in the playoffs, who came out and said, this was her first time watching Jokic and was blown away with how he plays. He was a 2x MVP by that time. The NBA seems very slow to react to promoting new stars.
