It’s almost like if you expand access to watch games, more people will watch. What a wild concept.

Neilson, the company that does ratings, recently changed their formula over the past 1-2 years. I believe they are now accounting for individual homes, and for the people inside restaurants and bars, not just the TVs themselves. It has led to higher numbers for live sports across the board the past 2-3 years.

NBA viewership and popularity has been increasing for the last 3 years, I wonder what certain French alien attractive intelligent tall amazing spectacular sophisticated passionate lengthy young man came around that time.

Ratings talk is an easy way to make any conversation of what you dislike into the reason for ratings being down (even if they are not).

The public feeling - rightfully - that watching the sport legally is expensive and burdensome is the primary contributor to this discourse IMO. Many feel that if they aren’t watching the games, others must also not be watching. Not the case

NBA fandom is weird. I’ve been a fan since 1993 and a casual fan several years before that and it feels NBA fans are always talking about the league like it’s in crisis even as its grown hundred-fold over that time.

“The NBA is dying” just feels like a Barstool narrative. Considering who owns and follows Barstool, I can’t help but jump to conclusions of where the distaste for the league comes from…

The 170 million total people is disingenuous. With streaming, we never seem to know truly how many people are watching, as streamers usually release numbers in a way they want them released. If someone accidentally clicked on a game while they were shopping on Prime and immediately X’d out, is that being counted as a viewer? Probably.

There is no way that viewership is up 86% over last season.

You Someone pulled that out of their ass.

Nba is fine

NBA putting out these stats is like Schrute-bucks and Stanley Nickels on the office

If I use 3 different streaming services to watch the NBA (ESPN, Peacock, Amazon) do I count as 3 separate viewers, or just 1? 

People don’t want to admit it, but a lot of the viewership is being driven by gamblers tuning into games.

People don’t watch games. They watch highlights on Instagram, tiktok and Reddit.  

From what I heard, they adopted a different way of counting viewers because of the stream which may or may not be wildly inaccurate. The NBA has some issues but this makes it look like everything is great. So many people were complaining at the of the season about all of the tanking. It turned a lot of people off

Come over to the Trail Blazers sub sometime and you’ll be amazed at how many people are showing up there from Israel (Avdija) and China (Yang Hansen). I think it’s a very fair question to ask if the NBA is in good shape in the US but it’s pretty unquestionable that things have never looked better internationally.

For me it’s rare to run into anyone that follows the nba but I guess the bulls do suck.

People are dumb and/or misinformed. More news at 11.

The people keep screaming at us that the NBA is dying because they wish it would lmfao. Why are they pouring so much energy into that? Will never understand those miserable type of people. And they even keep up with the league too.

Something’s off with this stuff. I’m a small sample but I literally don’t know a single person who actually watches the nba any more.

Are MLB/NHL and NFL fans are invested/interested in the TV deals and viewership numbers? Genuinely curious

I think the fresh new talented players have alot to do with the fans buying back into the NBA: Wemby, KKon, Flagg AND many others

The NBA is constantly dying and then gets “saved” by some new superstar(s). In the past at points it was way closer to actually falling off. Larry Bird/Magic really helped the NBA truly. Then Jordan put it into the stratosphere. Then there was a lull post Jordan with Kobe/Shaq taking over and being kind of the most marketable star. Then LeBron, then Curry.

Now we have a situation with Wemby who looks like the next big thing, but many of the best players are foreign. This is actually good for international markets but maybe less good for the US…However we have Cooper Flagg and Ant and are getting some stellar prospects coming into the league.

The league is expanding.

The NBA both talent-wise and popularity-wise is fine.

I think that the majour media outlets are the problem. A bunch of personalities in suits who get paid to talk for an hour and dish out hot takes that rage bait people.

They have a bunch of old heads hating on everything about the modern game. Hating on stars. Constantly talking about things like this. That “the NBA is dying because of;” too many 3s, or traveling, or wtv is the flavour of the day. It’s tiring

Yeah, the game is legit the worse it’s ever been. The political division in the US has also made things….weird in terms of race shit. (ifykyk)

I cannot possibly sit here and believe that the league, with the worse regular season games i’ve ever seen and 60% of the teams actively trying to lose - has most viewers in the US in 24 years! If you expect me to believe that then you might as well show me your bridge.

I don’t think the NBA is dying or will die. But I do think the current product sucks giant balls and the only evidence I need is the amount of teams willing to tank and eat fines just to improve their lottery chances.

Ya right

Despite these numbers, we constantly hear from casual fans and even some sports journalists that the NBA product is dying or that leagues like MLB and the NHL are overtaking it.

People will say anything for engagement, they should be ignored.

Probably counts me who watched 15 minutes of a game then turned it off cause the commercials are unbearable. I imagine a lot of people can’t sit through it

Do you always listen to idiots who don’t know what they’re talking about?

Network and cable TV are dying and they don’t like the changes. That’s all it is. Plus people swap off when commercials because “oh 30 second timeout time for 3 minutes of ads!”

Basketball is the third most popular sport in the world. The nba isn’t dying.

There is a lot of doom and gloom out there.  I just saw a video with Trey Wingo and according to the live tv ratings he was showing to make his point NBA is below MLB and like not too far ahead of WNBA. I don’t know where he gets numbers. I think live tv doesn’t include streaming cuz it seemed pretty low. 

Bashing the NBA is just easy engagement bait. Don’t think to much about it.

I think it’s a lot of older fans who are saying that. I hear people, even sports radio folks and other sports commentators, whining about how various streaming services are getting games now, and that it’s “too hard” to watch the NBA (or other sports) now.

I think older fans are dropping off a bit. The NBA already has the youngest fanbase of the four big North America sports. And the NBA is doing a good job with lots of short form clips and things, pulling in younger folks, who may not watch every game in full form like ‘traditional’ fans, but still enjoy the sport a lot more than Baseball or Football.

And I think the “it’s too hard” folks were more of a blip in time. Sure, 5 years ago it WAS a little strange to know that one random game was on Prime or whatever, but now? We’re all used to it, we all have all the streaming apps installed, so we can all find them when we want to.

How are they proving that 170 million figure? 

Who is saying the league is dying? Anyone who isn’t doing it just to get attention for themselves?

lol I’d imagine it has something to do with the uptick in sports betting apps and live bets

The NBA has an extremely diverse set of teams at the top of the league in terms of play styles, streaming access is getting better, there’s a new wave of star power taking over, and more talent in general than ever before.

Anyone who thought the NBA was gonna trend down despite all those factors is just dumb lol

These numbers are almost certainly inflated and/or misleading. For example. Numbers right now point to an average viewership of 1.78 million a sold 16% increase from last year. That’s however a far cry from the 86% that they are claiming. This number is still down from the 2.3 they were doing just 10 years ago. This number is just because they showed way more games to overall more people. So instead of the Rockets V Thunder just being shown in Hou, and OKC respectively. It’s now in a major slot being showed to the whole country. So even if they only bring in the 1.78 million. That’s still way more than the 400K that would’ve watched from those two local markets.

You do that enough times and you get this massive “increase.”. I do think the increase is positive. but this is not nearly what they are saying is. It’s more like the core NBA audience is now able to watch games they otherwise couldn’t.

It’s also why some are saying the league is dying because Outside of this year the average viewership had been going down. As for the MLB comparisons. It’s mostly due to championship ratings. The MLB over the past 5 years went from 11,9,12,16,16 in average viewership in millions. the NBA meanwhile Average about 10 Mil last year. Which included some incredibly high TV ratings games (Game 7) Which is still way down from the 16 mil of the MLB. Plus viewership from other markets (Namely Japan) is growing the game on TV over there. While the NBA is big in places like China we don’t really ever get numbers on that which are considered reliable.

Way to many people not questioning the 170 million number. That’s roughly half the population in the US, and there is no way half the population watched an actual NBA game this year. Idk how they got that number, but there has to be some kind of Hollywood accounting/funny numbers going on here to get it.

Then to answer OP’s question as to why companies are spending so much money, it’s simply that sports are one of the few options on TV with really high value that keep people on cable or on a live TV service. If a network wants to stay relevant as a hot commodity that cable and streaming services want to keep in their catalog, they need something that has long staying power, built in fan base, and a safe bet. It’s also why you’re seeing all sporting events making large jumps in their media deals (Big Ten went from \(440 million to \)1.1 billion a year, NHL in Canada went from \(4.5 billion to \)11 billion over 12 years, etc…). Sport broadcasting is more valuable than ever, and more and more networks are trying to get in on it; which increases it’s value even if viewership numbers are the same.

and ngas used to say nba is dying

I mean, you could just look at Nielsen ratings for an idea of the truth instead of worrying about narratives.

Sports “journalists” (they’re rarely journalists nowadays, more like talking heads parroting whatever will drive engagement at the behest of their bosses) are like the lowest rung of journalism. They’re barely a step above your highschool A/V club. The only reason they exist is to drive traffic to whatever medium they’re on, and what do you think would get more attention?

“The NBA saw a X% increase in viewership according to Nielsen data. The league is seeing a slow but steady increase in viewership worldwide, and everything is just peachy.”

or…

“OMG! The fucking sky is falling!!! The ratings are in the bucket and I’ll tell you why (without providing any data to support it). Click here to read 3000 chatGPT words explaining why increasing #’s of viewers actually means the NBA is dying.”

Casual fans don’t matter, they’re too busy arguing over player rankings and why aura matters

The NBA is in a great place right now its global audience is bigger than it has ever been. But the truth is, a lot of older players are always criticizing today’s NBA. Sometimes it feels like jealousy or resentment, and I honestly do not know if part of that comes from the salaries players make now.

I am 41 years old, and I have never really seen Michael Jordan constantly criticize this era in fact, I have seen him say he wishes he could still be playing today. But Barkley and others are always trying to put the modern NBA down.

Honestly, I cannot remember the NBA ever having as many superstars as it has had over the last 10 years. Just enjoy it, because I know I am.

Define watched the nba? Yeah, I’ve tuned in for 5 minutes, got disgusted with the officiating and traveling and turned it off… is the nba counting me

Evidence that the nba is at its peak when there is a (soon to be) dynasty to root against :)