NBA Looks For New TV Rights Deal As Viewership Tanks
The NBA season is underway, and fewer people than ever seem to care about it.
Opening night television ratings reached a nine-year low, with Tuesday's doubleheader on TNT averaging just 2.78 million viewers, according to Sports Media Watch. That figure also marked the second least watched opening night in the past 15 years. Compared to 2022's disastrous ratings, it was a 16% decline.
Even putting the star power of LeBron and the Los Angeles Lakers, Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors and Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets in primetime wasn't enough to get eyeballs. Quite simply, the NBA is struggling.
And in the face of these atrocious numbers, a new interview with Adam Silver reveals that the league is going to shoot for a $7-8 billion media rights deal in upcoming negotiations. That represents a 3x increase from their current TV deal. For what?
To listen to Silver, the ever declining ratings aren't because the league has become openly and increasingly associated with the political left. It's just because young people don't have cable.
"Now, of course, we're paying attention to the fact that not only is the basic cable universe decreasing, but the demographic of that audience is changing as well," Silver told Yahoo Sports. "It's beginning to look less like America — older and less diverse — and the NBA has a particularly young and diverse audience."
"So we recognize that, in some ways, the decline of cable has disproportionately impacted the NBA," he continued. "Our young audience isn't subscribing to cable, and those fans aren't finding our games."
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - JUNE 02: NBA commissioner Adam Silver speaks to the media prior to Game One of the 2022 NBA Finals. (Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)
Other Sports Aren't Suffering Same Declines As NBA
Silver's argument may have some merit - if other sports were seeing the same declines.
Game 7 of the NLCS between the Philadelphia Phillies and Arizona Diamondbacks, teams that don't exactly have the profile of the Warriors and Lakers, were watched by nearly nine million people.
Sure, baseball has older fans, but the gap isn't that large.
The NBA is simply less popular than it was in years past, because of the league's own mistakes. The rise of so-called "load management" has made matchups less compelling. The lax enforcement of rules towards superstars in particular have made games feel unfair.
But those explanations pale in comparison to their biggest issue: politics.
The NBA embraced the politically divisive Black Lives Matter movement significantly more than other sports leagues. A decision that looks like even more of a mistake in late 2023.
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Unsurprisingly, after alienating a huge portion of their potential audience, many of them tuned out. And never tuned back in.
Silver's made some small remarks about the damage this caused, but it's a bit of convenient reality denial to avoid accepting that their political extremism contributed to the ratings collapse. And with ESPN's financial struggles, it's hard to see them ponying up huge money to a declining league.
Being woke allies goes out the door when billions of dollars are at stake.