NBA Commissioner Adam Silver was a guest on Thursday’s Pat McAfee Show as the NBA playoffs are officially underway across the league. Regarding the NBA regular season viewership numbers, national television broadcasts on ABC, ESPN, and TNT reportedly averaged a collective 1.53 million viewers on the season, representing a 2% decline from the previous year.
When broken down by individual networks, the ESPN networks were flat from the previous year. However, games exclusive to the primary cable network were said to be down by 7%. Meanwhile, NBA games on ABC, which is also owned by The Walt Disney Company, reportedly averaged 2.68 million viewers over 24 games, marking a 10% increase from the last year.
Now, with the NBA set to begin new media rights agreements with The Walt Disney Company, Comcast Corporation, and Amazon under 11-year agreements worth a collective $76 billion dollars, Silver told McAfee that the decline in ratings was understood and accepted in his mind.
“In order to end up down 2% or relatively flat for the season, which is a victory these days. Especially with declining television viewership from traditional television, that’s a victory,” said Silver on the Pat McAfee Show. “The reason that happened is essentially post all-star, the ratings picked up a lot. In fact, to end up just down 2% for the season from where we came from, the ratings had to be up significantly. I think you saw tremendous competition around the league.”
Furthermore, the NBA commissioner also noted that the season beginning during an election year—combined with a very competitive World Series—contributed to the early viewership totals seeing declines.
Looking ahead, what excites Silver is how the league is positioning itself to be more adaptive to what the fan wants from their viewership experience.
“Traditional television has been great for professional sports, really for all sports. When you move to digital, it creates all kinds of new opportunities to personalize the feeds,” noted Silver. “To add merchandising, gaming, new angles, new audio feeds, sort of that Manningcast idea, but sort of on steroids. Where you can have sort of unlimited ways to access games. So I think we’re at the beginning of what I think we’re going to see a huge sea change in the way sports are presented through media.”
Moreover, Silver said that the league’s move to streaming aligns with where he sees the NBA’s audience shifting—toward digital platforms and away from traditional television. He added that fans are now watching sports in a different way than ever before, constantly seeking ways to stay engaged regardless of what’s happening on the court.
“We just want people to watch,” said Silver. “We just want to present people the best possible competition at any time. So, like, I think you’re going to see in the next few years more change in sports television than you’ve seen in the last 40 years.”
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