Alright, so, I’ve been digging into this whole NBA TV ratings thing, and let me tell you, it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster. I started out by just wanting to know what the current numbers were, you know, just out of curiosity. I wasn’t expecting to find anything too surprising. So, I fired up my computer and started searching. I saw some headlines about ratings being down, and I was like, “Okay, that’s interesting, let’s see what’s up.”

First thing I did was to try to get a handle on the actual numbers. I found out that during the 2023/24 regular season, each game was pulling in about 1.56 million viewers on average across ABC, ESPN, and TNT. Seems like a decent number, but then I found out that the decline was way more dramatic for the NBA Finals. We are looking at about half the audience size between 2015 and 2024. That’s a huge drop!
Then, I started looking into why this might be happening. One thing that a lot of articles talked about was the sheer number of regular-season games. They mentioned that there are just too many games, and I guess people are getting a bit burned out. Then there’s the whole thing about players switching teams all the time, and even the uniforms changing a lot, which seems to be confusing or turning off some of the fans. I can see how that might make it hard to feel connected to a team or a player.
Then there was another factor that got me thinking. I stumbled upon some discussions about the NBA’s social justice focus. Some folks were saying that the whole Black Lives Matter thing at the beginning might have turned some people off. I don’t know how much of an impact that really had, but it was interesting to see it being mentioned.
And the thing that really got me was seeing the difference between the viewership in recent years compared to, say, 2018. Even in 2018, when the Cavs were clearly no match for the Warriors, the average viewership was still a whopping 17.65 million. That’s a huge difference from the 1.4 million we’re seeing now.
I also came across some comments from NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. He addressed the declining TV ratings, and it seems like they are aware of the issue. It also seems like there are many other aspects of the NBA that are growing, but the TV ratings are really taking a hit.

- Looked up the average viewership for the 2023/24 season: 1.56 million across ABC, ESPN, and TNT.
- Compared the Finals viewership between 2015 and 2024, noted a nearly 50% drop.
- Read about potential reasons for the decline: too many regular-season games, player and team instability.
- Explored discussions on social justice issues as a factor.
- Compared current viewership with 2018 numbers, noticed a significant decrease.
- Found comments from NBA Commissioner Adam Silver addressing the ratings issue.
After going through all this, I’m still not sure what the main reason for the decline is. It seems like it’s a mix of different things. But it’s definitely something that the NBA is going to have to figure out. They’ve got billions of dollars on the line, and they need to find a way to bring the fans back. It’ll be interesting to see what they do next.