As we move closer to All-Star Weekend, a persistent theme about the NBA this season has been that it has a viewership problem. But does it really? John Skipper and David Samson broke it down with Pablo Torre on the latest edition of The Sporting Class on Pablo Torre Finds Out.
While it seems like the league’s leaders should be pulling their hair out to fix this issue, Skipper has a different view on the NBA and shared that the league is actually ascending. Skipper points to the NBA’s recent media rights deals, which the league struck last summer for $76 billion, as an indicator. He holds that the attention should be focused on that instead of the regular season ratings. Sure, the league’s ratings have been up and down; however, he does not believe the ratings should be a dramatic indicator of the league’s health. Skipper stressed that if you asked any NBA owner or commissioner if they want a 20% increase in viewership or a 300% increase in media rights, they would take the 300% increase all day! All in all, Skipper believes the league is in excellent shape.
Meanwhile, Samson expressed that the league actually has a game quality issue, while at the same time it has to figure out what it will look like post-LeBron James. The Lakers now have Luka Dončić, but will he be the face of the league after James retires, or will it be Victor Wembanyama? Pablo added that the Dončić trade showed that the league has some strengths but also some weaknesses in that EVERYBODY was talking about the Luka-AD trade. It HIJACKED the attention during Super Bowl week, yet this is also a weakness because people are consumed by the drama that surrounds NBA rather than the games themselves.
When comparing the NBA to the NFL, Skipper noted that the NBA does have the advantage of people knowing who their players are and having an opinion on them, especially since they are more visible and you can see their faces, whereas NFL players are obscured by the need to wear helmets. While the NBA plays to its strengths, the NFL plays to its strength of being the GREATEST SHOW ON TELEVISION. Skipper added that the scarcity of NFL games is another key factor; for an NBA team to win a championship, they would have to play 16 games and, in some cases, an additional 12 games for a total of 28 games. He explained that 127 million people are not watching a regular-season NBA game, so Commissioner Adam Silver has to work to make the number of games stand out. In context, even if you are a fan of the NBA, you are likely not watching every game your favorite team plays, but as an NFL football fan, every game is Must-See TV.
During Silver’s NBA State of the Union address, he offered to decrease the time within the quarters to 10 minutes to curb its viewership problem. Skipper proposed that instead of limiting the length of quarters, let’s limit the number of timeouts a team has and figure out the end of games. He stressed that you have to figure out how not to make the last 1:12 of a game take 16 minutes. Pablo, in an attempt to not go down the timeout wormhole, brought up the issue that Silver brought about, struggling to appeal to the 18-34 demographic due to streaming. Skipper highlighted that the league has to change its relationship with those that measure ratings to measure other things besides those metrics. The business of the NBA is BOOMING. However, the appeal of the actual product needs some more substantial PR.
For more on what’s next in the saga of the NBA’s media rights, check out the below episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out. Stay tuned, everybody, stay tuned!
SHOW BREAKDOWN
The Sporting Class: The Truth Behind the NBA Ratings Decline
- Sure, fewer people are watching basketball games these days. But the NBA has 76 billion reasons why that doesn’t matter. John Skipper, David Samson and Pablo do the math on Adam Silver’s real State of the Union — and why a rival, LIV-style league would never succeed. Plus: the goosing of Super Bowl numbers, the ballad of Monty the Giant Schnauzer… and the untold origin story of a certain award-winning sports business podcast.
VIDEO:
Check out the Pablo Torre Finds Out YouTube page for more and subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also follow the show on X at @pablofindsout and Pablo at @pablotorre.
