Why Are the NBA’s Ratings Going Down?

Is it the habits? Something else?

With the completion of the last season in the NBA, preparations for the next season will take shape according to future reports. In this direction, with the change of conditions, new regulations may come to shape the next seasons. Long discussed; the changing habits of the new generation and the monitoring habits that affect this have created a dramatic decrease in the NBA ratings. This decline includes the steady decline of the ratings of sports in general in recent years.

The bubble effect during the pandemic process, along with the viewing habits in modern times, was played on the calendar that was very different from the NBA viewing habits for the continuous audience, and the situation of the general audience was negatively affected.

Next generation viewing habits

Channeling the audience into live games is important here, because the opponents for the NBA are now social media such as Netflix and Amazon, because no one sits for about 2.5 hours and spends time on a single game. In our age, people want everything to be consolidated and the match consumes condensed. Having a better command of the match without watching a new generation organization. There is a wide audience to watch articles, podcasts, pre- and post-match programs, and they watch summary, fragmentary or certain important episodes. After all, the new generation is now; He tends to listen to podcasts about the match for half an hour, read 25 minutes and watch a summary for 10 minutes. So the 2.5 hour match has to become more

compact. The NBA is very troubled by this situation. As in the NFL, the matches are not very selective, so the matches lose their importance due to the higher number of matches. In the long term, it should be focused on solving the problems with radical decisions such as shortening the match times, narrowing the season, reducing the replays, reducing the breaks because the popularity of the league is not reflected in the number of views on TV. In order to be reflected in streaming views, it should ensure that the rates in other views or tracking are reflected in this channel. For example; In the NBA, unlike the NFL, the general audience, especially in the US, is a more traditional and older TV audience.

TV revenues and popularity

Considering that the NBA is a holding and teams are companies, the main goal is to be successful in their business. Companies may not always be able to make a profit, they can lose money at certain times, but if they do big losses in total, this is more important than everything else combined. It is true that there are social responsibility and tradition sides to this business, but he cannot accept such financial losses throughout the league. The NBA earns

significant income from the spectators who come to the stands in its annual accounting reports. One match day tribune revenues reach $ 4 million for some teams. Of course, when this amount is hit over the year, it reaches approximately $ 160 million in 40 matches for a single team. The NBA’s visibility is not reflected in the ratings, although the interest in general social relations has not decreased or even increased, even though the NBA is more popular all over the world today than the Michael Jordan era. In order to earn income from this popularity, it must be able to take the mass, on the other hand, to TV.

Fan income and new calendar

The impact of the falling ratings may not be directly material, but the following will emerge: during the pandemic, people will get less form, will start to spend less on teams, and there will be serious financial recession. To minimize this, the NBA evaluates when to start the best league financially, because extending the break too much is also a big problem. But if there is a scenario in which a certain number of spectators can come to the stands, of course he will want to use it. The process also varies from day to day, from

state to state. While some may be allowed, others may not and programming can be done accordingly. For example, in California, this decision will be made too late. In the last decision, in principle, they should aim to start with a spectator play scenario in the medium term, financially and chronologically, taking into account the most logical start, possibly without an audience, without throwing the calendar back too far.