The NBA is seeing its viewership plummet in the first half of the 2024-2025 season while the NFL enjoys some of its best ratings in the past decade.
As of last week, NBA ratings were down 17% across its main networks, ABC, ESPN, and TNT, according to CNBC Sport. The problem has become big enough for NBA Commissioner Adam Silver to address it, but Silver seems positive that the negative viewership trend isn’t “a lack of interest in the game.”
The NFL, meanwhile, recorded its highest average of viewers per game (17.3 million) through the first 10 weeks of the season, Front Office Sports reported last month. That average doesn’t include a few games that were available exclusively services Peacock and ESPN+ or international games broadcast on NFL Network. The NFL is also seeing a 7% increase in viewership on streaming service Amazon Prime this year compared to last year.
So, what’s behind the NBA’s struggles?
There are a few theories.
Some argue that the league has become “woke,” as players and coaches focus too much on politics when fans just want to watch basketball. Since 2020, the NBA has been one of, if not the most, pro-social justice sports leagues. After the 2020 death of George Floyd in police custody, the NBA allowed players to put phrases such as “Black Lives Matter” and “I Can’t Breathe” on their uniforms.
That decision clearly left a bad taste in the mouths of many fans. While the NBA has dialed back its league-wide push for social justice, some of the most notable players and coaches in the league — such as LeBron James, Stephen Curry, and Steve Kerr — are still openly political and openly Left-leaning.
If woke culture is a culprit for the NBA’s ratings decline, it’s probably not the sole reason. The NFL has also pushed social justice causes in recent years, and still allows players to place social-justice-inspired phrases on the back of their helmets. The wokeness in the NFL hasn’t gone completely away, but the pro football league’s ratings are spiking again.
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Others say the NBA’s viewership has declined because a handful of star players throughout the league haven’t been playing as much this season due to injuries. Stars like Joel Embiid, Zion Williamson, Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, Chet Holmgren, Paolo Banchero, Luka Doncic, and Victor Wembanyama have all missed multiple games this season.
The NBA commissioner has another theory. He pointed to the decreasing number of people watching traditional cable TV as a reason for the numbers the NBA is seeing this year.
“We’re almost at the inflection point where people are watching more programming on streaming than they are in traditional television,” Silver said, according to The Athletic.
Other sports are also struggling with viewership declines. Men’s and women’s college basketball, along with the NHL are all down this year, Sports Media Watch reported, a fact that appears to bolster Silver’s argument that the ratings decline has a lot to do with the overall decline in cable TV subscriptions.
Silver added that beginning next year, the NBA is going to make every game “available on a streaming service.”
Some fans complain that the NBA’s 82-game season is just too long to stay interesting, so it’s impossible for the league to keep its ratings up all year. To address this and bring more viewers in during the first half of its long season, the NBA started an in-season tournament where all 30 teams face off in a round-robin group play followed by a single-elimination playoff. The in-season tournament began last year and recently finished its second go-round. Ratings for this season’s tournament, however, were 10% lower than last year’s, Outkick reported.
In all likelihood, each theory for the NBA’s tanking ratings is partly correct. It’s true, as Silver points out, that the way people watch TV is rapidly changing, as streaming services gain more prominence, and injuries to any league’s star players won’t help with ratings.
But it’s also true that the NBA has been vocal about politics, and Americans just don’t want their favorite sports teams and players lecturing them about cultural issues and presidential candidates.
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[[{“value”:”
The NBA is seeing its viewership plummet in the first half of the 2024-2025 season while the NFL enjoys some of its best ratings in the past decade.
As of last week, NBA ratings were down 17% across its main networks, ABC, ESPN, and TNT, according to CNBC Sport. The problem has become big enough for NBA Commissioner Adam Silver to address it, but Silver seems positive that the negative viewership trend isn’t “a lack of interest in the game.”
The NFL, meanwhile, recorded its highest average of viewers per game (17.3 million) through the first 10 weeks of the season, Front Office Sports reported last month. That average doesn’t include a few games that were available exclusively services Peacock and ESPN+ or international games broadcast on NFL Network. The NFL is also seeing a 7% increase in viewership on streaming service Amazon Prime this year compared to last year.
So, what’s behind the NBA’s struggles?
There are a few theories.
Some argue that the league has become “woke,” as players and coaches focus too much on politics when fans just want to watch basketball. Since 2020, the NBA has been one of, if not the most, pro-social justice sports leagues. After the 2020 death of George Floyd in police custody, the NBA allowed players to put phrases such as “Black Lives Matter” and “I Can’t Breathe” on their uniforms.
That decision clearly left a bad taste in the mouths of many fans. While the NBA has dialed back its league-wide push for social justice, some of the most notable players and coaches in the league — such as LeBron James, Stephen Curry, and Steve Kerr — are still openly political and openly Left-leaning.
If woke culture is a culprit for the NBA’s ratings decline, it’s probably not the sole reason. The NFL has also pushed social justice causes in recent years, and still allows players to place social-justice-inspired phrases on the back of their helmets. The wokeness in the NFL hasn’t gone completely away, but the pro football league’s ratings are spiking again.
50% OFF ALL DAILY WIRE ANNUAL MEMBERSHIPS FOR A LIMITED TIME!
Others say the NBA’s viewership has declined because a handful of star players throughout the league haven’t been playing as much this season due to injuries. Stars like Joel Embiid, Zion Williamson, Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, Chet Holmgren, Paolo Banchero, Luka Doncic, and Victor Wembanyama have all missed multiple games this season.
The NBA commissioner has another theory. He pointed to the decreasing number of people watching traditional cable TV as a reason for the numbers the NBA is seeing this year.
“We’re almost at the inflection point where people are watching more programming on streaming than they are in traditional television,” Silver said, according to The Athletic.
Other sports are also struggling with viewership declines. Men’s and women’s college basketball, along with the NHL are all down this year, Sports Media Watch reported, a fact that appears to bolster Silver’s argument that the ratings decline has a lot to do with the overall decline in cable TV subscriptions.
Silver added that beginning next year, the NBA is going to make every game “available on a streaming service.”
Some fans complain that the NBA’s 82-game season is just too long to stay interesting, so it’s impossible for the league to keep its ratings up all year. To address this and bring more viewers in during the first half of its long season, the NBA started an in-season tournament where all 30 teams face off in a round-robin group play followed by a single-elimination playoff. The in-season tournament began last year and recently finished its second go-round. Ratings for this season’s tournament, however, were 10% lower than last year’s, Outkick reported.
In all likelihood, each theory for the NBA’s tanking ratings is partly correct. It’s true, as Silver points out, that the way people watch TV is rapidly changing, as streaming services gain more prominence, and injuries to any league’s star players won’t help with ratings.
But it’s also true that the NBA has been vocal about politics, and Americans just don’t want their favorite sports teams and players lecturing them about cultural issues and presidential candidates.
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