Ratings for national broadcasts of NBA games are down by 5% through the first half of the season across ESPN and TNT Sports networks, accruing an average of 1.76 million viewers. Although the league has had stronger numbers throughout the month of February, there are conversations surrounding the significance of such a dip as the league is set to commence new 11-year media rights contracts with The Walt Disney Company, Comcast Corporation and Amazon reportedly worth a collective $77 billion. In fact, the league recently recorded the second-lowest viewership of the NBA All-Star Game ever recorded with an average of 4.72 million viewers on TNT and truTV.
Dan Le Batard reemphasized a point made by former ESPN president John Skipper on The Sporting Class podcast during his program on Thursday. Within his discussion with David Samson and Pablo Torre, Skipper explained that ratings for the NBA were not as important as the new media rights deal. While he acknowledged that NBA commissioner Adam Silver would need to answer questions about the ratings dip, he didn’t feel that the fluctuation was that relevant on particular days.
“The guaranteed money that NBA now has, it doesn’t matter if you watch it or not,” Le Batard concurred. “You can say the sport is dying, but that’s become a social media sport. People are still consuming it. They might not be consuming it at the minute you want them to, and that might hurt the next contract, but what they’re getting now, those arenas can be empty.”
Le Batard argued that points of contention such as the All-Star Game and load management were irrelevant since the league had received its money. Because television needs the content and that successful conglomerates are competing for the rights, he felt that it did not matter whether or not people are watching since the remuneration is guaranteed. Jon “Stugotz” Weiner, co-host of the program, felt that the league business would eventually be hurt if this was the case, leading Le Batard to express that he thought it would happen now.
“You don’t have to be watching late-night television right now at the appointed time in order for late-night television to be successful because it’s traveling through your social media feed,” Le Batard said. “Basketball is in the new age of what this is, and they have all the money in the world to figure out something in eight years that I thought would already arrive here because if they were going to be affected by it, it was going to be after the bubble, after Kyrie Irving, during laid management, and it didn’t affect it at all.”
Due to the money the league is receiving and forging partnerships with streaming entities that possess large content budgets, such as Netflix and Amazon, Le Batard believes that customers are becoming irrelevant as well and starting to represent collateral damage. Greg Cote, journalist for the Miami Herald, backed this point by explaining how Unrivaled Basketball is a made-for-television sport and ostensibly utilizes fans as background.
“You can play in empty stadiums – they did during the pandemic,” Le Batard said. “I know they prefer the concessions, they prefer to have arenas filled with people, but the televised product is more important than the in-person product, and you’ve seen this for a decade. It’s more fun, easier to watch it at home than it is to brave the parking. It’s the new age of getting disconnected from your sports team while you think you’re more connected to it than you’ve ever been.”
Barrett Media produces daily content on the music, news, and sports media industries. To stay updated, sign up for our newsletters and get the latest information delivered straight to your inbox.
