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If the NBA just got rid of blackouts for NBA Team Pass & NBA League Pass, they’d be fine. The NBA’s current media situation is a disaster and so people just watch through illegal streams, which are somehow often of higher quality than official legal streams.
Also 82 games is just too many to keep the attention of casual fans. I bet that the NBA could make more money with a shorter season that starts after the NFL finishes up & that has even more games with neutral commentators on broadcast TV, but they’ll never take the risk of reducing the number of games in a season. Shortsightedness.
I agree the media rights are a nightmare. Unless you are watching your home team on their own network it takes some searching to figure out where the games are going to be broadcast. People also like the illegal streams because they usually aren’t bombarded with gambling ads every break.
The NBA will likely never lower the game count and that would cause ticket prices to skyrocket just to even out with the 82 game season. If they were smart they would start right around Christmas and finish up right before college football and the NFL starting.
Too many game is very true.
The product has been garbage for years. Also, the pacers will never ever win a championship under Simon ownership.
Yes to all of the above! Regular season needs to be shortened. Less teams in playoffs. From a technical standpoint there are things that can be accomplished, just as dunking was made illegal due to Alcindor’s (Abdul Jabbar’s) dominance at one point. When a player gives up a certain layup only to pass to a team mate stationed on the 3-point line, something’s wrong. We live in a digital world unlike analog when the ABA intro’d the 3-point shot in 1967. Allow 8 seconds in the paint, foul shots = 1.5 points, 3 pointers 2.5, field goals stay at 2. These changes would provide for a more balanced, better played game. Originally, 3 point shots were hit at a much lower % ….now it’s evolved into a ‘shooting gallery’.
Too much hype, primarily by the tv networks. Too much ‘biggest game ever’ hype. Loud music and fast talking tv announcers telling us how super the players and teams are.
Players without real personalities or charisma, or even intelligence in some cases.
No real playing anymore, just ‘look at me’ mentalities.
The media and the players have basically taken the fun out of watching the games.
I love the comment about the WNBA. “We play all the time and we hate each other”. The polarizing opinions about Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese have only fueled interest in the WNBA. Commentators said all the bickering was hurting the league when it did just the opposite because people want to follow both the heroes’ AND villains’ story lines.
“But the primary reason for the viewership decline is young people and their changing viewing habits.” The author of this WaPo piece got close, but never actually touched on an alarming, well-documented trend among that coveted 18-34 year old market – their eroded attention span. NBA stakeholders cite lofty social media interest as a reason to celebrate, but that doesn’t translate into TV viewership. It actually proves the opposite – many of those eyeballs responsible for exploding social media interest no longer have the attention span to actually tune into a game for the purpose of watching the game. Their only interested is the highlight, and they’re only capable of consuming it via a Tik Tok, Meta Reel, or YouTube Short.
The highlight reel made popular by SportsCenter in the 1990s used to be a tease designed to increase viewership in the actual product. Now that same highlight reel is cannibalizing it’s parent via dopamine-addicted smartphone users that can’t focus for more than thirty seconds. Of course they’re cutting expensive cable subscriptions – why pay for the product when I no longer have the ability to enjoy it’s offerings, and I can watch the highlight for zero cost, in the format I enjoy, which is really all I wanted in the first place?
Author and professor Dr. Gloria Mark’s research into and conclusions about our faltering attention spans are alarming and available to the masses, including the sports property brain trusts. But there’s a disconnect among the elite front office types and broadcasters to acknowledge the elephant in the room. If these trends continue – and because of their addictive properties, there’s no reason to believe they won’t – the short-form video has to be monetized and the definition of ‘viewer’ changed in order to flip the down trending ratings.