Ratings down across all sports,

[Duke4life831]

I understand Youtube didnt buy Esports. Like I said the League of Legends tournament by itself gained more viewers than the NBA finals. Overwatch or Call of Duty both garners more clicks on Youtube than the NBA does.

Im also not denying that streaming and digital is where all things will end up. What I am saying as of right now, there is no way YouTube, Hulu or whoever is going to drop 2.5 billion dollars a year for exclusive rights for the NBA. Even if we say YouTube buys the rights for 1 billion dollars a year and NBA monetizes the videos and collects on the ad revenue. They arent coming close to 1.5 billion in ad revenue. Also to be clear the 2.6 billion a year isnt for every NBA game, thats just for the nationally televised games and playoffs. The individual teams TV deals bring in between 9 million a year to 150 million a year (depending on the team). So lets say the total local TV revenue from games is somewhere around 1 billion per year. If the plan is to have all games on Youtube, that is another billion dollars per year that the NBA is going to have to find.

Just to put this into context, NYTimes and Business Insider have Pewdiepie's annual income from Youtube ads at around 15.5 million dollars. The NBA would need to be about 200x more popular on Youtube than Pewdiepie to reach 3 billion. The NBA isnt going to get 200x the amount of viewing time than Pewdiepie.

So again yes I agree that the transition to digital streaming is going to happen sooner or later. All Im saying is, its not going to be as smooth as many think, especially if the NBA doesnt pick up its numbers in the next few years. These digital streaming services arent going to get into a massive bidding war for something that gets a 3-4 TV rating and cant beat out a Seattle vs Minnesota regular season game when you got a closeout NBA finals game with LeBron James on the Lakers.

I get everyone likes to boohoo the TV ratings. But guess what Hulu and Youtube are seeing how those games compete with other things airing with Hulu Live and YouTube TV and its not a pretty picture. Again there wont be a huge bidding war for a league that is struggling to get viewers.

This.

It is going to be a massive mess when the contract is up as well. If the ratings continue to decline, the deal isn't going to be near as lucrative, which means the salary caps will likely decrease, which will put some teams in cap hell. Meanwhile, players aren't going to want to take less money, so I'm sure that will get messy. I'd be shocked if a lockout of some kind doesn't take place.

Yup. Again when the last contract was signed, the NBA finals was seeing about a 10-15 TV rating (percentage of households that watched the game). These finals went from a 3.1 rating to 4.8 rating. If in 2014 they thought 2.6 billion dollars was worth the biggest games getting a 10-15 TV rating, why the hell would they shell out another 2.6 billion per year for 1/3 of the TV market. And again this is if the NBA didnt want to grow at all and just sign the same exact deal in 2024 as they did in 2014 (thats not good growth).

Again yes I agree 100% that sooner or later everything will move to a streaming service. But if the ratings continue (the regular season ratings were really bad before the bubble as well and we have seen a dive in the finals ratings for the last 3 finals), TV channels and streaming services arent going to get into a massive bidding war. Its going to be a bunch of lowball offers, because the NBA wont have the numbers to back up asking for a larger contract.

[oaktownwarriors87]

more context as it relates to the NBA

The 37 percent decline is in line with the broader trend facing the sports industry since the wave of cancellations and postponements in March. The NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs declined an almost identical 38% across NBC’s TV and digital platforms (from 1.53M to 953K) and the MLB Division Series sank 40% on TBS, FS1 and MLB Network (from 3.04M to 1.82M)

The decline in sports ratings comes amidst a broader decline in television viewing overall; an average of 76.2 million viewers were watching primetime television on the first five nights of the Finals, nearly eight million fewer than during last year’s Finals (83.8M).

Cable news viewing has taken up a greater portion of that diminished audience. Viewership on the “big three” cable news networks was 78% higher on the first five nights of the Finals than during last year’s series, rising from 3.8 to 8.4 million viewers combined.

https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2020/10/nba-playoff-ratings-decline-finals-record-low-sports-viewership/

NBA numbers are distorted because a Canadian team was in the Finals last year. ABC, TNT and ESPN don't get the Canadian numbers.

The drop in ratings is actually worse than this.

[Mephariel]

I don't think there's anyone that argues Black Live's don't matter, but the stance that the NBA has taken, associating voting for Biden and Black Lives, is completely inaccurate. I think that's what drove a lot of fans who have conservative views away. Rather than working on real issues, the stance that the NBA has taken is vote trump out of office and everything goes back to normal.

I consider myself middle of the road but leaning conservative and this is one of the big reasons why NBA hasn't appealed to me as of late. I still watched though, because i don't wan't politics to come between me and my favorite team. I just wish the NBA would take the same stance, don't let politics come between you and your fans.

Seems to me that you simply disagree with the NBA's political stance.

IMO siding with Biden/BLM was better than the alternative.

You see this is the thing. It seems there are people who believe for a fact that it IS better than the alternative, when in fact it’s simply an opinion. You are entitled to your own opinion, as am I. You saying it’s better than the alternative isn’t a mic drop, it’s an opinion.

If you sit there and tell me what is the right opinion, I’m either going to listen, or I’m going to look away and leave. That’s what the NBA is doing, forcing their fans to listen, or change the channel.

Again, the NBA players want to speak up. What are you going to do about it? Should the NBA muted the players microphones?

[Brofessor24]

Basketball compared to what its used to be is just that not enjoyable any more.

Look at the NFL, even though the offensive rules have been favoured you still have different style teams ans parity. In the NBA, everyone plays the same and the parity kind of sucks.

The parity is better nowadays in comparison to previous decades.

IMO the modern NBA is much more enjoyable than the NBA of the 1990s/early 2000s.

[KqWIN]

I understand Youtube didnt buy Esports. Like I said the League of Legends tournament by itself gained more viewers than the NBA finals. Overwatch or Call of Duty both garners more clicks on Youtube than the NBA does.

Im also not denying that streaming and digital is where all things will end up. What I am saying as of right now, there is no way YouTube, Hulu or whoever is going to drop 2.5 billion dollars a year for exclusive rights for the NBA. Even if we say YouTube buys the rights for 1 billion dollars a year and NBA monetizes the videos and collects on the ad revenue. They arent coming close to 1.5 billion in ad revenue. Also to be clear the 2.6 billion a year isnt for every NBA game, thats just for the nationally televised games and playoffs. The individual teams TV deals bring in between 9 million a year to 150 million a year (depending on the team). So lets say the total local TV revenue from games is somewhere around 1 billion per year. If the plan is to have all games on Youtube, that is another billion dollars per year that the NBA is going to have to find.

Just to put this into context, NYTimes and Business Insider have Pewdiepie's annual income from Youtube ads at around 15.5 million dollars. The NBA would need to be about 200x more popular on Youtube than Pewdiepie to reach 3 billion. The NBA isnt going to get 200x the amount of viewing time than Pewdiepie.

So again yes I agree that the transition to digital streaming is going to happen sooner or later. All Im saying is, its not going to be as smooth as many think, especially if the NBA doesnt pick up its numbers in the next few years. These digital streaming services arent going to get into a massive bidding war for something that gets a 3-4 TV rating and cant beat out a Seattle vs Minnesota regular season game when you got a closeout NBA finals game with LeBron James on the Lakers.

I get everyone likes to boohoo the TV ratings. But guess what Hulu and Youtube are seeing how those games compete with other things airing with Hulu Live and YouTube TV and its not a pretty picture. Again there wont be a huge bidding war for a league that is struggling to get viewers.

Let's be honest here. We don't know how much the NBA could make from ad revenue. We're basically making up fake numbers saying what portion of the $2.6 B value comes from ads and what comes from other value added. How do you know that the NBA won't pull $1.5B in selling their own ads on YouTube. They could easily get more viewers online than on TV if they put then NBA games on home pages. Livestreams of scoreboards of NBA finals games have millions of views. I think the actual games would do very, very well.

TV is a different realm than digital. You can't just use cable statistics to determine how effective a product will be on digital. The revenue streams, content delivery, and audiences are very different. That would be the same thing as using the digital numbers to show what's the most popular on TV. We know that's not true, there's a huge disparity there. While the cable numbers would be very concerning if digital wasn't an option, digital is an option and the online presence that the NBA has does matter in the digital space. Being appealing to a network is not the same as being appealing to a digital platform. The NBA should focus on the latter.

[Duke4life831]

I understand Youtube didnt buy Esports. Like I said the League of Legends tournament by itself gained more viewers than the NBA finals. Overwatch or Call of Duty both garners more clicks on Youtube than the NBA does.

Im also not denying that streaming and digital is where all things will end up. What I am saying as of right now, there is no way YouTube, Hulu or whoever is going to drop 2.5 billion dollars a year for exclusive rights for the NBA. Even if we say YouTube buys the rights for 1 billion dollars a year and NBA monetizes the videos and collects on the ad revenue. They arent coming close to 1.5 billion in ad revenue. Also to be clear the 2.6 billion a year isnt for every NBA game, thats just for the nationally televised games and playoffs. The individual teams TV deals bring in between 9 million a year to 150 million a year (depending on the team). So lets say the total local TV revenue from games is somewhere around 1 billion per year. If the plan is to have all games on Youtube, that is another billion dollars per year that the NBA is going to have to find.

Just to put this into context, NYTimes and Business Insider have Pewdiepie's annual income from Youtube ads at around 15.5 million dollars. The NBA would need to be about 200x more popular on Youtube than Pewdiepie to reach 3 billion. The NBA isnt going to get 200x the amount of viewing time than Pewdiepie.

So again yes I agree that the transition to digital streaming is going to happen sooner or later. All Im saying is, its not going to be as smooth as many think, especially if the NBA doesnt pick up its numbers in the next few years. These digital streaming services arent going to get into a massive bidding war for something that gets a 3-4 TV rating and cant beat out a Seattle vs Minnesota regular season game when you got a closeout NBA finals game with LeBron James on the Lakers.

I get everyone likes to boohoo the TV ratings. But guess what Hulu and Youtube are seeing how those games compete with other things airing with Hulu Live and YouTube TV and its not a pretty picture. Again there wont be a huge bidding war for a league that is struggling to get viewers.

Let's be honest here. We don't know how much the NBA could make from ad revenue. We're basically making up fake numbers saying what portion of the $2.6 B value comes from ads and what comes from other value added. How do you know that the NBA won't pull $1.5B in selling their own ads on YouTube. They could easily get more viewers online than on TV if they put then NBA games on home pages. Livestreams of scoreboards of NBA finals games have millions of views. I think the actual games would do very, very well.

TV is a different realm than digital. You can't just use cable statistics to determine how effective a product will be on digital. The revenue streams, content delivery, and audiences are very different. That would be the same thing as using the digital numbers to show what's the most popular on TV. We know that's not true, there's a huge disparity there. While the cable numbers would be very concerning if digital wasn't an option, digital is an option and the online presence that the NBA has does matter in the digital space. Being appealing to a network is not the same as being appealing to a digital platform. The NBA should focus on the latter.

Im not making up numbers. Im giving you examples of what kind of ad revenue the biggest channels on Youtube make. PewDiePie is one of the biggest channels on Youtube, he gets 230 million views a month. These arent made up numbers, these are public numbers. And that is 12 months a year, not just the 8 months that the NBA season and playoffs are.

Also lets not overrate social media and overall popularity. For example, the UFC has more Instagram and Youtube followers than the NFL. The UFC is nowhere near the NFL when it comes to popularity.

Would the NBA get better numbers on Youtube compared to on ABC? Yes, Im not denying that. Im looking at Youtube having an overall revenue last year of 15 billion dollars, Im looking at the biggest youtube stars that get hundreds of million views a month that end up getting around 15 million dollars in ad revenue per year. Im looking at if the NBA just wants to break even with the TV deal they currently have right now, plus matching the revenue they bring in from local TV deals (because again the idea is to have all games on Youtube behind no paywall) which would come out to be at minimum 3.5 billion dollars annually.

Looking at all of that, no I dont see Youtube wanting to put up the annual money for broadcasting rights for a sport that has been hemorrhaging viewers for years. Whether that be because of losing popularity, illegal streaming (even though I would argue that if that was the main issue a sport like the NFL would be seeing bigger loss of viewers than theyre currently seeing since they have more young fans in total than the NBA).

It seems like many people on here arent willing to accept that maybe just maybe, the NBA isnt gaining viewers who watch games, theyre losing them. The NBA didnt lose 50-60% of its audience in 1 year all to illegal streaming. Its losing fans.

[KqWIN]

I understand Youtube didnt buy Esports. Like I said the League of Legends tournament by itself gained more viewers than the NBA finals. Overwatch or Call of Duty both garners more clicks on Youtube than the NBA does.

Im also not denying that streaming and digital is where all things will end up. What I am saying as of right now, there is no way YouTube, Hulu or whoever is going to drop 2.5 billion dollars a year for exclusive rights for the NBA. Even if we say YouTube buys the rights for 1 billion dollars a year and NBA monetizes the videos and collects on the ad revenue. They arent coming close to 1.5 billion in ad revenue. Also to be clear the 2.6 billion a year isnt for every NBA game, thats just for the nationally televised games and playoffs. The individual teams TV deals bring in between 9 million a year to 150 million a year (depending on the team). So lets say the total local TV revenue from games is somewhere around 1 billion per year. If the plan is to have all games on Youtube, that is another billion dollars per year that the NBA is going to have to find.

Just to put this into context, NYTimes and Business Insider have Pewdiepie's annual income from Youtube ads at around 15.5 million dollars. The NBA would need to be about 200x more popular on Youtube than Pewdiepie to reach 3 billion. The NBA isnt going to get 200x the amount of viewing time than Pewdiepie.

So again yes I agree that the transition to digital streaming is going to happen sooner or later. All Im saying is, its not going to be as smooth as many think, especially if the NBA doesnt pick up its numbers in the next few years. These digital streaming services arent going to get into a massive bidding war for something that gets a 3-4 TV rating and cant beat out a Seattle vs Minnesota regular season game when you got a closeout NBA finals game with LeBron James on the Lakers.

I get everyone likes to boohoo the TV ratings. But guess what Hulu and Youtube are seeing how those games compete with other things airing with Hulu Live and YouTube TV and its not a pretty picture. Again there wont be a huge bidding war for a league that is struggling to get viewers.

Let's be honest here. We don't know how much the NBA could make from ad revenue. We're basically making up fake numbers saying what portion of the $2.6 B value comes from ads and what comes from other value added. How do you know that the NBA won't pull $1.5B in selling their own ads on YouTube. They could easily get more viewers online than on TV if they put then NBA games on home pages. Livestreams of scoreboards of NBA finals games have millions of views. I think the actual games would do very, very well.

TV is a different realm than digital. You can't just use cable statistics to determine how effective a product will be on digital. The revenue streams, content delivery, and audiences are very different. That would be the same thing as using the digital numbers to show what's the most popular on TV. We know that's not true, there's a huge disparity there. While the cable numbers would be very concerning if digital wasn't an option, digital is an option and the online presence that the NBA has does matter in the digital space. Being appealing to a network is not the same as being appealing to a digital platform. The NBA should focus on the latter.

Im not making up numbers. Im giving you examples of what kind of ad revenue the biggest channels on Youtube make. PewDiePie is one of the biggest channels on Youtube, he gets 230 million views a month. These arent made up numbers, these are public numbers. And that is 12 months a year, not just the 8 months that the NBA season and playoffs are.

Also lets not overrate social media and overall popularity. For example, the UFC has more Instagram and Youtube followers than the NFL. The UFC is nowhere near the NFL when it comes to popularity.

Would the NBA get better numbers on Youtube compared to on ABC? Yes, Im not denying that. Im looking at Youtube having an overall revenue last year of 15 billion dollars, Im looking at the biggest youtube stars that get hundreds of million views a month that end up getting around 15 million dollars in ad revenue per year. Im looking at if the NBA just wants to break even with the TV deal they currently have right now, plus matching the revenue they bring in from local TV deals (because again the idea is to have all games on Youtube behind no paywall) which would come out to be at minimum 3.5 billion dollars annually.

Looking at all of that, no I dont see Youtube wanting to put up the annual money for broadcasting rights for a sport that has been hemorrhaging viewers for years. Whether that be because of losing popularity, illegal streaming (even though I would argue that if that was the main issue a sport like the NFL would be seeing bigger loss of viewers than theyre currently seeing since they have more young fans in total than the NBA).

It seems like many people on here arent willing to accept that maybe just maybe, the NBA isnt gaining viewers who watch games, theyre losing them. The NBA didnt lose 50-60% of its audience in 1 year all to illegal streaming. Its losing fans.

PewDiePie or any other YouTuber to NBA isn't a one to one comparison, you know that. If you think that views calculation is correct, then explain how overwatch league gets $60M with the viewers they get. And again, that $60 is not for ads. That is for exclusivity only. OWL grand finals did 1/3 of the NBA scoreboard livestream by the way. Views is not the only thing that factors into the money, and even it it was CPM is highly variable across different content.

Also I don't think that everything has to be on YouTube. I think YouTube homepage is the equivalent to an ABC broadcast. A paid subscription would be similar to paid cable, except significantly cheaper. An equivalent to a local broadcast would probably be the NBA allowing fans to pay to watch their local teams, which is only possible with cable currently. I think there's a million different ways they could configure this with one or multiple digital platforms. These are just possibilities. For the NBA in particular, I think all the digital solutions are better.

I don't disagree with you about the NBA losing fans. Personally I think the NBA has lost fans because the product sucks..which I've said a couple times now. The regular season is so incredibly boring and meaningless I'm wondering how the NBA can hold on to causals at at all. But no matter what the damage is or how it's caused, the NBA is still far better off on digital. A lot of people are calling for solutions that specifically address the cable audience, but I don't think that's smart because cable is a sinking ship for the NBA anyways. But yeah, the thing that's probably contributing most to the loss of fans/viewership is that the product sucks and that is a problem no matter where the NBA goes.

I guess our main disagreement is that you believe that the TV numbers are more important to digital than I believe they are. I just believe that there are drastic differences between TV and digital. TV indicators are not the same as digital indicators and vice versa. The NBA has some things going for them that probably don't mean much to the networks but actually hold a ton of value to digital platforms.

Going back to my very first post, I think the challenge the NBA facing is transitioning their digital presence into digital success and that's a totally different process than optimizing their product for TV. Digital is a completely different world and that's what they she be focusing on...how they can maintain and increase their presence and also how to monetize that most effectively. Every sports league will have to think about these things eventually.

[Desiderium]

Seems to me that you simply disagree with the NBA's political stance.

IMO siding with Biden/BLM was better than the alternative.

You see this is the thing. It seems there are people who believe for a fact that it IS better than the alternative, when in fact it’s simply an opinion. You are entitled to your own opinion, as am I. You saying it’s better than the alternative isn’t a mic drop, it’s an opinion.

If you sit there and tell me what is the right opinion, I’m either going to listen, or I’m going to look away and leave. That’s what the NBA is doing, forcing their fans to listen, or change the channel.

I clearly said "IMO...."

Try to keep up.

I wasn't referring to your stance, simply pointing out that there are people who believe their opinion is a fact, rather than an opinion.

[Desiderium]

Seems to me that you simply disagree with the NBA's political stance.

IMO siding with Biden/BLM was better than the alternative.

You see this is the thing. It seems there are people who believe for a fact that it IS better than the alternative, when in fact it’s simply an opinion. You are entitled to your own opinion, as am I. You saying it’s better than the alternative isn’t a mic drop, it’s an opinion.

If you sit there and tell me what is the right opinion, I’m either going to listen, or I’m going to look away and leave. That’s what the NBA is doing, forcing their fans to listen, or change the channel.

Again, the NBA players want to speak up. What are you going to do about it? Should the NBA muted the players microphones?

And i get that, they have the right to speak up. However, civil rights isn't a political issue last I checked. And this is what the NBA had been saying all along, so then why make it political and clearly endorse a party? To me, it almost feels like the NBA is taking advantage of the fact that there are civil rights issues in our country, and that this is a perfect opportunity to restore their business relationship with china by associating the Democratic party and civil rights into one. Biden in charge means more money to the NBA, since China is their number 1 market.

Also, why are you asking me what I'm going to do about it? I said in my earlier post that I still watch it because I don't want politics to come between me and my favorite team/players. Fans aren't going to do **** about it, except maybe watch another sport which is the whole topic of this thread.

[djsunyc]

I understand Youtube didnt buy Esports. Like I said the League of Legends tournament by itself gained more viewers than the NBA finals. Overwatch or Call of Duty both garners more clicks on Youtube than the NBA does.

Im also not denying that streaming and digital is where all things will end up. What I am saying as of right now, there is no way YouTube, Hulu or whoever is going to drop 2.5 billion dollars a year for exclusive rights for the NBA. Even if we say YouTube buys the rights for 1 billion dollars a year and NBA monetizes the videos and collects on the ad revenue. They arent coming close to 1.5 billion in ad revenue. Also to be clear the 2.6 billion a year isnt for every NBA game, thats just for the nationally televised games and playoffs. The individual teams TV deals bring in between 9 million a year to 150 million a year (depending on the team). So lets say the total local TV revenue from games is somewhere around 1 billion per year. If the plan is to have all games on Youtube, that is another billion dollars per year that the NBA is going to have to find.

Just to put this into context, NYTimes and Business Insider have Pewdiepie's annual income from Youtube ads at around 15.5 million dollars. The NBA would need to be about 200x more popular on Youtube than Pewdiepie to reach 3 billion. The NBA isnt going to get 200x the amount of viewing time than Pewdiepie.

So again yes I agree that the transition to digital streaming is going to happen sooner or later. All Im saying is, its not going to be as smooth as many think, especially if the NBA doesnt pick up its numbers in the next few years. These digital streaming services arent going to get into a massive bidding war for something that gets a 3-4 TV rating and cant beat out a Seattle vs Minnesota regular season game when you got a closeout NBA finals game with LeBron James on the Lakers.

I get everyone likes to boohoo the TV ratings. But guess what Hulu and Youtube are seeing how those games compete with other things airing with Hulu Live and YouTube TV and its not a pretty picture. Again there wont be a huge bidding war for a league that is struggling to get viewers.

Let's be honest here. We don't know how much the NBA could make from ad revenue. We're basically making up fake numbers saying what portion of the $2.6 B value comes from ads and what comes from other value added. How do you know that the NBA won't pull $1.5B in selling their own ads on YouTube. They could easily get more viewers online than on TV if they put then NBA games on home pages. Livestreams of scoreboards of NBA finals games have millions of views. I think the actual games would do very, very well.

TV is a different realm than digital. You can't just use cable statistics to determine how effective a product will be on digital. The revenue streams, content delivery, and audiences are very different. That would be the same thing as using the digital numbers to show what's the most popular on TV. We know that's not true, there's a huge disparity there. While the cable numbers would be very concerning if digital wasn't an option, digital is an option and the online presence that the NBA has does matter in the digital space. Being appealing to a network is not the same as being appealing to a digital platform. The NBA should focus on the latter.

Im not making up numbers. Im giving you examples of what kind of ad revenue the biggest channels on Youtube make. PewDiePie is one of the biggest channels on Youtube, he gets 230 million views a month. These arent made up numbers, these are public numbers. And that is 12 months a year, not just the 8 months that the NBA season and playoffs are.

Also lets not overrate social media and overall popularity. For example, the UFC has more Instagram and Youtube followers than the NFL. The UFC is nowhere near the NFL when it comes to popularity.

Would the NBA get better numbers on Youtube compared to on ABC? Yes, Im not denying that. Im looking at Youtube having an overall revenue last year of 15 billion dollars, Im looking at the biggest youtube stars that get hundreds of million views a month that end up getting around 15 million dollars in ad revenue per year. Im looking at if the NBA just wants to break even with the TV deal they currently have right now, plus matching the revenue they bring in from local TV deals (because again the idea is to have all games on Youtube behind no paywall) which would come out to be at minimum 3.5 billion dollars annually.

Looking at all of that, no I dont see Youtube wanting to put up the annual money for broadcasting rights for a sport that has been hemorrhaging viewers for years. Whether that be because of losing popularity, illegal streaming (even though I would argue that if that was the main issue a sport like the NFL would be seeing bigger loss of viewers than theyre currently seeing since they have more young fans in total than the NBA).

It seems like many people on here arent willing to accept that maybe just maybe, the NBA isnt gaining viewers who watch games, theyre losing them. The NBA didnt lose 50-60% of its audience in 1 year all to illegal streaming. Its losing fans.

i think attention spans are shortening. ufc has short time span fights. youtube vids are usually under 10 mins. all other sports is one competition for 2.5+ hours before the outcome. so ufc is much different than all the other sports.

[Mephariel]

You see this is the thing. It seems there are people who believe for a fact that it IS better than the alternative, when in fact it’s simply an opinion. You are entitled to your own opinion, as am I. You saying it’s better than the alternative isn’t a mic drop, it’s an opinion.

If you sit there and tell me what is the right opinion, I’m either going to listen, or I’m going to look away and leave. That’s what the NBA is doing, forcing their fans to listen, or change the channel.

Again, the NBA players want to speak up. What are you going to do about it? Should the NBA muted the players microphones?

And i get that, they have the right to speak up. However, civil rights isn't a political issue last I checked. And this is what the NBA had been saying all along, so then why make it political and clearly endorse a party? To me, it almost feels like the NBA is taking advantage of the fact that there are civil rights issues in our country, and that this is a perfect opportunity to restore their business relationship with china by associating the Democratic party and civil rights into one. Biden in charge means more money to the NBA, since China is their number 1 market.

Also, why are you asking me what I'm going to do about it? I said in my earlier post that I still watch it because I don't want politics to come between me and my favorite team/players. Fans aren't going to do **** about it, except maybe watch another sport which is the whole topic of this thread.

Did the NBA endosed Biden though? They endosed Black Lives Matter because it would have been a disaster if they didn't. The players and Silver would be in constant conflict with each other. The players might not have played.

Also, maybe I am different but I am also an MMA fan, and numerous UFC personnel have endosed Trump, including the president of the UFC, Dana White. Popular fighters like Colby Covington, Michelle Waterson, and Jorge Masvidal openly supports Trump. That didn't stop me from watching though, and it won't stop me from watching in the future.

Politics is a part of life. Would it make it difference if the NBA privately supports democratic stances rather than publicly? They are still supporting something you don't support.

[R-DAWG]

The problem with the ratings right now is there is too much competition. Take game 6 of the NBA Finals - it went up against LCS baseball and sunday night football. How many of the people that tuned into baseball or football would have been watching the NBA finals if it was played at a normal time? And how many people watching the NBA finals would have watched football or baseball had there been no basketball?

Another thing that was mentioned in regards to the NBA is the oversupply of games combined with summer weather. The NCAA tourment works because you basically have 8 days packed with games at a point of the year when the weather is cold. It's hard to watch 4 NBA games per day for 2 months, especially in August when your trying to maximize your summer activities.

Anyway, regardless of the ratings, I enjoyed the NBA restart. The competition was very strong, the playoffs felt legit, and the NBA did an excellent job with the production aspect - 90% of the time you didn't realize that fans were not in the stands.

[LAKESHOW]

Go Dodgers!! First the Purple and Gold Lakers, and now the Dodger Blue

[Mos_Heat]

I understand Youtube didnt buy Esports. Like I said the League of Legends tournament by itself gained more viewers than the NBA finals. Overwatch or Call of Duty both garners more clicks on Youtube than the NBA does.

Im also not denying that streaming and digital is where all things will end up. What I am saying as of right now, there is no way YouTube, Hulu or whoever is going to drop 2.5 billion dollars a year for exclusive rights for the NBA. Even if we say YouTube buys the rights for 1 billion dollars a year and NBA monetizes the videos and collects on the ad revenue. They arent coming close to 1.5 billion in ad revenue. Also to be clear the 2.6 billion a year isnt for every NBA game, thats just for the nationally televised games and playoffs. The individual teams TV deals bring in between 9 million a year to 150 million a year (depending on the team). So lets say the total local TV revenue from games is somewhere around 1 billion per year. If the plan is to have all games on Youtube, that is another billion dollars per year that the NBA is going to have to find.

Just to put this into context, NYTimes and Business Insider have Pewdiepie's annual income from Youtube ads at around 15.5 million dollars. The NBA would need to be about 200x more popular on Youtube than Pewdiepie to reach 3 billion. The NBA isnt going to get 200x the amount of viewing time than Pewdiepie.

So again yes I agree that the transition to digital streaming is going to happen sooner or later. All Im saying is, its not going to be as smooth as many think, especially if the NBA doesnt pick up its numbers in the next few years. These digital streaming services arent going to get into a massive bidding war for something that gets a 3-4 TV rating and cant beat out a Seattle vs Minnesota regular season game when you got a closeout NBA finals game with LeBron James on the Lakers.

I get everyone likes to boohoo the TV ratings. But guess what Hulu and Youtube are seeing how those games compete with other things airing with Hulu Live and YouTube TV and its not a pretty picture. Again there wont be a huge bidding war for a league that is struggling to get viewers.

Let's be honest here. We don't know how much the NBA could make from ad revenue. We're basically making up fake numbers saying what portion of the $2.6 B value comes from ads and what comes from other value added. How do you know that the NBA won't pull $1.5B in selling their own ads on YouTube. They could easily get more viewers online than on TV if they put then NBA games on home pages. Livestreams of scoreboards of NBA finals games have millions of views. I think the actual games would do very, very well.

TV is a different realm than digital. You can't just use cable statistics to determine how effective a product will be on digital. The revenue streams, content delivery, and audiences are very different. That would be the same thing as using the digital numbers to show what's the most popular on TV. We know that's not true, there's a huge disparity there. While the cable numbers would be very concerning if digital wasn't an option, digital is an option and the online presence that the NBA has does matter in the digital space. Being appealing to a network is not the same as being appealing to a digital platform. The NBA should focus on the latter.

Im not making up numbers. Im giving you examples of what kind of ad revenue the biggest channels on Youtube make. PewDiePie is one of the biggest channels on Youtube, he gets 230 million views a month. These arent made up numbers, these are public numbers. And that is 12 months a year, not just the 8 months that the NBA season and playoffs are.

Also lets not overrate social media and overall popularity. For example, the UFC has more Instagram and Youtube followers than the NFL. The UFC is nowhere near the NFL when it comes to popularity.

I would guess that UFC is way more popular around the globe than NFL. I don't think it's even close tbh