Jason Whitlock didn’t even write this! Greg Couch is the author.
The article somewhat covers that. There’s a slant but overall it seemed reasonably fair.
I think the numbers for the bubble overall could be deemed “okay”/“fine” if maybe a tad disappointing prior to the Finals because of those and other factors.
The Finals numbers are terrible even under the circumstances and have to be at least a little concerning for league stakeholders though. Even with all the competition and everything else going on, ratings were down like 60-70% compared to last year. This year featured the league’s highest profile player on the league’s highest profile team going against another strong franchise (and Lebron’s former team) with a bunch of scrappy and compelling players and last year had a team from Canada with the least marketable major star in the league and the Warriors after a Durant injury.
Football’s ratings are down some but not close to that extent. The ALCS is down by about that much but last year featured the Yankees and pre-scandal Astros, which is the complete opposite of the NBA getting a dramatically better matchup. The ALDS with the Yankees was right around the ALDS last year.
It would be the equivalent of Tiger going into the Sunday of the Master’s with the lead and that being down 60-70% from a prior year where Ian Poulter entered Sunday with a 7 stroke lead or something. No way that would happen.
The article is posted on the outkick.com website not the mercurynews.com. Heck you don’t have to like Whitlock or outkick.com. It is a free country. I merely pointed out that his articles and this website is great.
This is a weird juxtaposition and I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. The Mercury News is the only major paper in the San Jose area. Are you trying to say that they’re…less reputable than Outkick?
This NBAseason set new digital media records for the league.
—6.9B video views on social channels since July 30 restart
—2.6B video views on Instagram
—1B video views during Finals across platforms
—321M YouTube views during the postseason
—61M YouTube views during Finals
But sure the NBA is worried…it is not all just measured by “regular TV” any more.
But by all means tell then to shut up and dribble.
The article talks about that aspect to an extent and that’s well known too. The NBA has been the best league at using social media and a web presence by far to get their clips out there and circulated.
How do those numbers compare year over year though? Also, I’m betting a big part of that jump (assuming there is one) is that games this year haven’t been available in China. People in China are probably finding ways to look up a bunch more clips this year in response.
The issue is that the vast majority of revenue has come from selling tv rights and tickets to live events. Generating revenue from young people and people in other countries looking up clips on the internet is much lower. If league stake holders deliver a product in a manner that is going to somewhat alienate half the country (right or wrong, which is a discussion/argument that will close down this thread, though you seem to be itching to get in that argument) it’s naturally going to limit what their income could be. But it’s a free country and the league can make that choice if they want. In a different climate things may also be a lot different and the likely next face of the league (Luka) seems pretty apolitical.
For something like the WNBA which more appeals to people with progressive political views going heavy into it is probably a good business call to expand on their core since there’s limited upside for mass appeal.
That was the only good part of the article when it talked about younger people just watching clips on social media and basketball is a very highlight dominated sport. I know people were arguing if LeBron should have passed or not in game 5 without even watching the game.
A huge piece that people are ignoring are how bad the Finals games were. Game 6 was a complete blowout. In these bubble games, it was hard to get into a poor quality game or a blowout with no crowd. I tuned out of a few even as somebody whose life revolves around basketball.
NBA still got over 4 times the viewers of the ALCS when they went head to head. I would take out of that baseball should be worried.
They don’t have access to those social media sites.
We can’t get into the racial justice movement, but remember that when the NBA made the decision almost 70% of the country supported BLM. One political party has gone 100% against it and dropped that number to around 55%. So I would bet 90-95%+ of their audience was in that 70%. I know multiple people who don’t like what they are doing but still watched the finals because they are basketball people. I do not know a single person who watched last year and didn’t this year because of racial justice messages.
Baseball has been in decline for years. In a chase for revenue they they have put themselves on the viewing fringe (almost no games on free TV) and have done little to grow their fanbase (diversity) or attact younger viewers. I saw a report a few years back that baseball has the oldest fanbase and that is not good long term for the league.
But back to ratings this year. I just take it with a grain of salt. During the shutdown a lot of people had to make due with no sports, it is posdible across the board they developed a new habit that no longer includes sports. Time will tell.
I know about the access limitations. That’s why I phrased it as “finding ways”. My (limited) understanding is that there are ways folks in China can get VPNs to get around some of the restrictions. That may be wrong though.
I know folks who watched last year and didn’t this year and either disagreement with the messaging or just getting burnt out with it was probably a factor.
Most of the polling on appropriateness of “politics” in sports has usually been 50/50. But when the question basically says something like do you support athletes expressing political views but think it should be left out of the game it goes to like 70% who answer yes. The Jordan Bulls probably had a good number of people in the 30% who answer “no” to that question but probably very few in that group watched last year. I bet there’s a good number of folks in the 20% who answered “no” to the first questions and “yes” to the second who watched the finals last year and didn’t watch this year though.
The NFL went more towards racial equality messaging and kneeling has been endorsed by the commish. Even Jerry Jones has allowed it and has included more racial equality messages. People have easily found a way to ignore that. I think you are overestimating the amount of people who are NBA fans and against racial equality messages. It is a small percentage.
This reminds me of when everybody said Nike was doomed by hiring Kaepernick and putting him in commercials. All that led to was record sales and an all-time high stock price even when the president of the country was calling for people to boycott them. Nike clearly knew their market and made the right decision.
I disagree on the percentage. All messaging isn’t received the same and the NBA’s messaging is presented in a way that’s more likely to alienate. Notice that the NFL chose to put “Equality” on the field rather than “Black Lives Matter”. I’ve watched plenty of both since the restarts and I find it hard to believe someone couldn’t see the difference between the broadcasts of the two sports and how social messaging has been incorporated. The NFL also didn’t have the equivalent of the Morey/China thing and ensuing response to undermine a heavier handed message.
I know people said that about Nike. I didn’t. I thought it was a little bit of a risk but thought that overall it wouldn’t have much of an impact on revenue or would be positive. I also wasn’t sure how much of an impact things were prior to the Finals. But the numbers are extremely bad for that under the circumstances. If it had been Nuggets-Raptors in the finals with the same numbers I’d say it’s fair to somewhat write it off.
If you told people in the business of sports media in 2014 that Lebron would be going for his fourth title with the Lakers in a Game 6 after an epic game 5 battle against the Heat with their current star going toe to toe with Lebron they probably would have projected that game would have close to 30 million viewers. Covid, the game getting out of hand, going against the NFL, etc. are all factors for why it only drew 5.6 million instead. But when Yankees-Rays in the ALDS does 3.9 million on TBS something else is clearly going on.
How big of a problem is this financially down the road? If it is, should they care or be fine with potential revenue loss? Will this last or is it a one time thing that will go away in a different climate? Your mileage may vary on the answer to those.
This has led to fevered speculation about the reasons behind the ratings collapse. Some have been in good faith; some in bad.
But the new poll doesn’t support any of the above theories.
The notable exception was NASCAR. While pluralities of football, basketball and baseball fans said the athletes’ political views didn’t impact their viewing habits, 44 percent of fans of NASCAR — where a reckoning with Confederate flags and a purported noose hung in the paddock of a driver of color set off a reckoning — said that it did.
I could go into issues with that poll but anyone who reads that and thinks “Wow, 30% say they are consuming less and 20% say they are consuming more so every single broadcast of every single sport should be down 10% if that’s the issue” are making an argument in bad faith.
The ratings for the NBA finals are uniquely bad for how most people view the stature of the sport and the stature of Lebron James. It’s possible that social justice messaging/“politics” isn’t a factor but Occam’s razor would indicate that it probably is. Again, I wasn’t really sold until the Finals, but how bad the ratings were given the circumstances seem pretty undeniable.
If people are wrong and the NBA is closer to the NHL as a real niche sport in the US than it is to the NFL that’s probably a worse issue for the league quite frankly.
And just to be clear, I think there are some specific issues the NBA has with respect to viewership relative to the NFL or past points of the NBA that have nothing to do with social justice messaging or “politics”.
Baseball hasn’t done as much to try to grow the game as a league like the NBA (they are trying now) but it also is just a bad sport for the direction media consumption is going.
It’s a sport of anticipation rather than action at it’s core and the games are pretty long. People just don’t have the same level of patience.
Game 6 is 8.29 million, you can check the Nielsen numbers. A bunch of bad articles are still throwing out that 5.6 number. Again, bad journalism. The burden of proof is on the journalist to show proof of what they are saying. Or at least show the whole picture. The original article is trash and so are most of the articles on outkick.
In your opinion, how many millions of viewers or percentage of viewers did the NBA lose because of the racial equality push? The NBA demographic would not lead to much of a loss. You can research it some more, no chance I could see it leading to more than a 10-15% drop.
If I write that ALCS numbers are down because of the Astros cheating scandal, how would you prove I am wrong? You couldn’t but it would still be bad journalism to write a whole article about how that was why they couldn’t even get 2 million viewers for an ALCS game.
Just looked it up on Nielsen. They have it as 7.5 million. That’s a lot better than 5.6 (maybe that was the overnight number?) but still fairly bad.
If the equivalent of this game happened in 2012-2014 in a normal finals with no pandemic it’s probably doing around 27-28 million.
Idk. In an alternate universe where our political climate didn’t get polarized and the NBA didn’t sort of become part of that but we still have a pandemic, the same amount of cord cutting, etc. my completely out of my rear guess is that Game 6 would/should do 12-15 million.
WNBA Finals with a strong uptick. Not sure if that is due to Sue Bird. Great for the women. Hope that trend continues for them. My former CEO is now Commish of the WNBA. I know she’ll do a fantastic job.