Media

Reader Mailbag: Why Are NBA Ratings Down to Start the Season?

One month into the NBA season, ratings are down in primetime compared to this time last year. What’s causing the dip?

By Daniel Roberts and Colin Salao

Nov 23, 2024 | 01:00 pm

UPDATED Nov 23, 2024 | 06:31 pm

Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images

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NBA viewership on ESPN is down 28% through Nov. 21, averaging 1.772 million viewers through the first 18 games broadcast on the network.

Over on TNT, viewership was down 3% until Tuesday’s NBA Cup game between the Celtics and then-undefeated Cavs brought ratings nearly even with last year. TNT is seeing an average 1.8 million viewers per game.

What explains the dip? Everyone has a theory.

Shaquille O’Neal, speaking on his own podcast on Nov. 7, blamed a glut of three-point shooting.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver, in a Nov. 15 interview on Cheddar, pushed back on Shaq (“I don’t think it has anything to do with the three-point shot”) and blamed the fact that basketball, in the first two weeks of the season, was up against the World Series and the presidential election.

An ESPN spokesperson echoed Silver, citing “competition this year with such things as the election cycle and college football, and a rash of injuries to the biggest stars” in an email to Front Office Sports. “We remain positive for our full season outlook.”

Our readers have plenty of opinions too.

In response to our Nov. 17 Editor’s Box column about the NBA ratings dip, we heard from you on X/Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and via email. Here are just a few of the responses, including from some notable names like former NBA Coach of the Year George Karl and TikTok creator Kofie.

Style of Play

“The Product and Players need to be better. No excuses!” —George Karl, former NBA head coach, No. 6 all-time in wins

“All they do is in the NBA is shoot 3s. 3 after 3 after 3.” —Joe Schad, Palm Beach Post

“It’s the trash walk walk walk carry palm walk gather zero step walk some more jump sideways 10 feet and call it a step walk walk jack a 3 flop nonsense. Anyone over about 40 hates this garbage.” —Tim Stephens

“My least favorite pro sport to watch now for 3 reasons: No parity like the other leagues; way too many free throws slowing down the game/making it boring; and I guess taking 3-4 steps without dribbling is legal now?” —Joe Neder

“Watching guys fire up 3s in borderline meaningless games is probably not what the NBA should aspire to be” —Satchel Price

“Has to do with one thing, the product. The game now does not resemble what real @NBA hoop was. Rules, can’t defend paint, up to 5 steps allowed, no hand checking, defense is gone as are basic fundamentals. 3 point shooting contest nightly which means more failure that fans watch.” —Wes Clements

Load Management / Star Players Injured

“The load mgmt problem is still hurting the ratings too. For example- Paul George had 29 the other night for Philly and then sits out the next game. I think stuff like that is turning off a lot of casual fans because all of us in general wanna see these guys play” —David Bagga

“It’s identity politics and load management. Throw in for close to a decade the ‘offseason moves of free agency’ being discussed in November, it’s no wonder the league blows. I don’t know a single adult who doesn’t work in sports that watches the NBA before April.” —Nick Kayal

“The most unavailable star players have ever been. Every game is missing someone important.” —@crownroyalpapi_

“I really think it’s as simple as LeBron exploiting that the regular season doesn’t matter. The Cavs would coast all season and then run through the East. Kawhi won a title on load management. 7 seeds are routinely favored over 2 seeds. People need stakes.” —Ben Axelrod, Awful Announcing

The Season is Too Long / Should Start Later

“I think the issue revolves primarily around load management, a long regular season and the start-time of the regular season. Imagine how important every game could feel if you cut the NBA season to 55 games and it started on Christmas or New Years?” —@wesmatthewsfan

“It’s been obvious for a very long time that the NBA dilutes its appeal by playing way too many games. Not only does this hurt by saturating the market with 3-4 games per week per team (compare: 17 games over 18 weeks for an NFL team), it leads to stress-related injuries and prudent decisions by teams to rest stars in order to preserve them for the later games that matter. The league then has to publicly warn its teams not to do this for ABC/ESPN/TNT games, since it hurts ratings. This is embarrassing. Lots of fans have urged the NBA to reduce the regular season by at least 20%. Rather than incurring the short-term pain this would bring in order to better position the league for the long haul, the NBA’s cynical response has been the League Cup, which tries very hard to inject interest in early season games with gimmicks.” —Jay Peters

“To be honest the primetime games matchups are meh considering the injured stars. Plus competition from NFL and the election. I expect ratings to pick up around the holidays (Christmas Day) and stars coming back.” —Dan Gottlieb

“Honestly I have not gotten into the nba season yet because I had enough hoops between olympics and wnba over the summer, and it’s november nba… without having missed basketball, yeah, holler at me on christmas (which is when the nba should start a shorter regular season)” —Jesse Spector, independent sportswriter

“Too many meaningless games. See you in the playoffs.” —Ulises Miranda

ESPN Broadcasts Are Not Compelling Enough

“NBA on ESPN has been 📉 since they laid off so many key announcers. Folks liked tuning into games to listen to Van Gundy & Mark Jackson / their great chemistry with Breen. Listening to a long standing group of announcers creates nostalgia and NBA ESPN has none of it.” —@dubbysleepy

“Your reward for tuning into ESPN on time for a 6:30 tip off is 15 extra minutes of Kendrick Perkins and Stephen A Smith having a shouting match about Anthony Davis regardless of what game is about to be shown” —@Bucks_Breakdown

“Night and day difference between NBA and NFL coverage on ESPN. too much narratives and not actually breaking down the game” —@gReenbean_26

NBA’s Politics / “Too Woke”

“Maybe LeBron should stop insulting Trump and his supporters?” —Nicholas Pramis

“NBA is owned by the CCP. Love basketball, not a fan of the NBA at this time.” —@dontbefooled321

The Ratings Don’t Matter Because the NBA Isn’t Going Anywhere

“To me, this is the same type of convo people have when they say “how much did this album sell first week?” or “What was this movies budget?” Brother! Who cares! Was it fun? Was it a good song? Did you enjoy the movie? That’s all that matters. The NBA isn’t going anywhere.” —Esfandiar Baraheni, The Athletic

“NBA viewership ratings always dip during election years. A slight dip in viewership numbers at the beginning of the season clearly also doesn’t matter given the media rights deal the league just signed — if it was a concern, NBC and Amazon wouldn’t have been clamoring to pay billions of dollars to show games.” —Adam Swindlehurst

“I keep seeing ‘NBA ratings down, what can they do to raise them?’ But why do ratings need to go up? I’m sure the NBA is plenty profitable. Just leave the sport alone. Enough gimmicks. Ratings aren’t realistically going to rise exponentially each year. That should be okay.” —@softdrinktv

You can always sound off on Editor’s Box by emailing dan.roberts@frontofficesports.com or commenting on the column when we post it on LinkedIn or Twitter. You might end up in a future mailbag.

Read all our ongoing coverage of NBA ratings here: