My league pass just constantly buffers on the smart TVs, it only works on a laptop. I pay $130+ for this annually and it does not even work well, the illegal streams work better. The officiating is also so bad that it is blatantly obvious they are trying to follow story lines, Nike is like the mob when it comes to controlling who gets MVP or who gets foul calls. The past decade the NBA has turned into WWE. You need to remove the Nike influence, and stop trying to create storylines and favor bigger markets by letting certain players live by a different set of rules. People have the ability to easily watch plays again in the modern era, and they think we are fools. The other issue is that a lot of the players are just not likeable, and they are very visible with social media. Lebron is the greatest player ever, it should not even be a discussion, but he is so hated off the court for expressing his uninformed opinions and exerting his influence, KD, Harden, Butler, just constantly complain about things on and off the court, these guys are so out of touch with the fans and the rest of the world, and expect people to treat them like royalty. The league has lost touch with the real fans, they have made it more entertainment than competitive sports, and it is targeted towards wealthier people now. They went after the money, this is the result. The Mavs ownership treating the team like it is any other corporation without any emotional ties is essentially what the league has been doing for a while, treating fans as purely revenue generating customers, and analyzing things based purely on dollars. The league is not struggling because they have essentially replaced their customer base with higher revenue generating customers, this could potentially backfire at some point.
The NFL is the most watched because it’s games are shown on TV, live over the air. The games are free for fans to watch on their TV’s. People are cutting cable every day. Then no wonder the NBA is losing ratings. MLB just lost its deal with ESPN too. Maybe they will begin airing the games over the air. One can only hope they head in that direction.
...your success in viewership numbers as a sports league will largely be impacted by how deeply aligned to cable networks you are. If you give those networks Blackout restrictions for the very biggest/best games, then it only stands to reason that you will have lower viewership numbers as people continue to cut the cord. Obviously the path to getting the most "views" is by finding the lowest barrier to entry for the TV watching public and also tapping into the magic of FOMO where you don't want to miss talking about "the game" everyone is chatting about Monday morning. That being said, viewership and profitability for a league are two different things entirely so I think viewership numbers being up/down don't speak to how teams get their money nor do they speak to what advertisers are looking for. If networks are willing to overbid to keep viewership on their platforms maybe the league doesn't care if viewership numbers are down overall if it's still making more and more money every year - at least not yet. Maybe the NBA makes more money with huge TV deals + officially licensed merch than they would have made if they contracted with an "over the air" network+officially licensed merch to a larger sized fanbase. You also gotta figure, advertisers are more interested in connecting to markets of people who have money so if you are a cord cutter, do advertisers really care about you? I would imagine it depends on what they are selling but I would think American Express is far more interested in buying ad space to people with more expendable wealth than Charmin is. With the NBA in particular(I'm not as familiar with the other sports), teams are being purchased by investment groups of ultra rich elites who see team ownership investment opportunities as lucrative so I think that's generally a good sign for the league because now there is a never ending supply of investment groups who will gobble up any way to get into the market regardless of viewership numbers. I think sports viewership is obviously at a crossroads as streaming has fragmented viewership across multiple platforms and while it's not surprising to see Cowturd give the most superficial take ever, this isn't an NBA specific problem so much as a problem where three large entities(advertising, networks, and sports leagues) are each trying to find a way to sway the most profitability for their entity long term. I think the problem here is, while it's definitely a factor this is not really a customer viewer centric exercise - it's about making the most money in the short term because no one really wants to make big investments in the long term of viewership given how much uncertainty there is right now in markets. The other issue I think is happening here is, I'm not sure there is broad consensus on how to measure viewership in this day and age. I'm not as plugged into the current landscape here but my Dad retired from Nielsen several years back and I know the market was quickly changing underneath them at the time leaving an opening where there wasn't a consolidated 3rd party that captured all of these metrics in a standardized way meaning advertiser/network/sports league negotiations were being driven through some combination of Nielsen TV ratings data + self reported network traffic data + social media engagement + device analytics. We all know there are ways now to easily sway many of those metrics for your own purposes and you better believe there is a heavy investment in distorting the perception of reality for their own financial interests. Long post but the TLDR is this is a much bigger **** show of a problem than any one sports league and is at a very unique intersection of multiple 100lb gorillas all vying for the biggest piece of the pie and "viewers" are ironically not the loudest voice in the room.
I just want to remind everyone the NBA revenue stream will begin exploding next season up to (and including) the 2035-36 season because of the ridiculous 11-year contracts with Disney/NBC/Amazon. The NBA salary cap will increase by 10% annually for the foreseeable future. NBA player salaries are going to be stratospheric compared to MLB and even high-profile European soccer players. In 5-6 years, the total number of NBA players making over $100M/year could be 2-3x all other global sports put together. The NBA's declining popularity combined with a locked in guarantee of insane revenue growth will be something for the ages. Amazon is Amazon but I wonder how Disney or (esp) NBC will fare in the long term.
Its because the app is poorly optimized. I have a Google TV box and it's watchable but from time to time it'll lag. I have no issues on an Apple TV because it's more powerful hardware. Either that or the app is coded better on Apple and not on Android based TV boxes
League's two best players are two of the least attractive people in pro sports. No offense. Ratings would rise if you put both these uggos in masks like the Louisville player.
