I often see this thread because NBA is gradually losing it’s appeal to the American viewers. Like they can’t beat the football in head to head on Christmas games something like that.

36 comments

  1. There are 82 games. You just have to win a good number of them, but mostly don’t matter until the playoffs. There are only 17 football games a year. Every one of them is important.

  3. The playoffs obviously get a ton more viewers, but that isn’t the same as saying nobody cares the rest of the season. 

    NBA has massive viewership, but during the beginning and middle of the season it stands to reason the numbers will be lower. It competes with baseball and then also football. 

    Casual fans like myself don’t watch much this time of year because my time is devoted to hockey and football. 

    The season is also arguably longer than it needs to be considering how long the playoffs are as well. 

  4. For context I love the NBA season. However, 82 games is a lot and thus Americans who say that are really saying a lot do games don’t matter because the season is too long.

    You could lose 10 straight in the NBA and easily make the playoffs. Doing that in the NFL would easily end your season.

    Games matter more in the NFL which is what makes it special.

  5. The NBA gets a lot of viewers in the regular season, but there are so many games. A few losses in the NBA, NHL, MLB season will not derail your season, but it absolutely will in the NFL and college football. And the playoffs are just exciting, especially since there’s not a superteam or dynasty right now, unlike much of NBA history.

  7. It’s a long season compared to the NFL. There’s more incentive to win ever game in the NFL because of how their playoff system is set up.

  8. I’m a diehard Milwaukee Bucks fan. I live 5.5 hours from Milwaukee but I watch every game and I make it to 4-5 games per year, sometimes even flying to road games.

    Maybe it’s because the Bucks are nearly guaranteed to make the playoffs, maybe I’m jaded after the recent championship… but with the exception of a few top matchups, the regular season sometimes feels like an 82 game preseason.

    They’ve been doing things like reducing load management and adding the in-season tournament which have helped. I’d like to see them put an end to tanking somehow.

  10. > I often see this thread because NBA is gradually losing it’s appeal to the American viewers.

    Source?

    > *Majority* of Americans say

    I *really* want a source on *this*.

  11. There’s 82 games and over half of the teams will get a spot in the playoffs, which means each individual game is almost meaningless. Because of this the star players and fan favorites don’t even play in half of the games.

    Also, because of the way contracts work and the salary cap the NBA draft has become extremely important as a way to get young talent which doesn’t cost you very much and therefore gives you a better shot at succeeding in the future – in order to improve their spot in the draft (the worst teams get the first choice of new players), roughly 1/3 of the league is “tanking” at any given moment i.e. intentionally trying to lose to get a better draft pick. As you can imagine, this doesn’t make for a very exciting or competetive regular season.

  12. Also, the playoffs are so long and they added the play in which makes them even longer.

    The first round being 7 games is just ridiculous too.

    I’ll watch the conferences and the finals and that’s 3 weeks of games.

  13. >NBA is gradually losing it’s appeal to the American viewers. 

    Is it??? Where did you get that from?

  14. There are so many regular season games. So few of them have high stakes. And so many teams get in the playoffs in the end.

  15. Because a huge number of teams make the playoffs. Thus a lot of the heavy hitters don’t take it that seriously during the regular season. But once there’s actual stakes it becomes more interesting.

  18. I’m personally tired of dudes sitting out 20 games and final scores being 153-147.

  19. Not even nba players care much about regular season. Teams make up reasons to rest players during the year to save them for the playoffs. 

    It has become more like this over the years as the salaries have gone higher. 

    That said, it never has or will beat the NFL in viewers. And I’m a big nba fan. 

  20. What a mess of unsubstantiated claims.

    No, the NBA isn’t as popular as the NFL. It never has been.

  21. The nfl regular season is 17 games. Every single one affects the team greatly.

    Basketball is like 80, so each means much less.

    Also, there’s more advertising for football games since they have a week to hype up and announce matchups. Basketball is very hard to know everything that’s going on since it’s basically impossible to see every game. Most people just watch the team they follow and maybe a few others, whereas tons of football fans watch as many games as possible

    Plus, injuries are a lot more common and serious in football, which heavily affects each team. So keeping your team healthy in the regular season is extremely important

  22. Sports have to compete with the content provided by streaming services and globalization, so any sport is at risk of losing viewership because a consumer may want to spend their time watching something else.

    When you add that to the “82 games in a regular season” and “franchise players limiting minutes”, then the NBA regular season games really aren’t a compelling product.

    I also don’t think the NBA commands as many tribalist viewers as the NFL.

  23. For example, in NFL, 95% of audiences are white. And half the players are white. It feels relatable to the fans especially if the quarterback is white.

  24. Load management. The NBA also isn’t losing viewers. Plus the NFL has always dominated the NBA in ratings. Dafuq? There’s only 17 NFL games vs 82. Plus NBA draws high ratings on Christmas… when it doesn’t have to compete against the NFL

  25. IDK what OP is talking about… the NBA is the second most watched sports league in the US.

    A big part of why football is so much more popular is because it’s the easiest sport to follow for casual fans. I live in Wisconsin. Even if I lived clear across the state, I could drive to Green Bay if I had season tickets because most of the games are on the weekend. But if I didn’t live in the city, I’m probably not gonna drive to Downtown MKE on a weeknight to see the Bucks play the Knicks.

  26. Your post is really two separate questions that don’t have that much to do with each other:

    1. Why does the NBA regular season not matter very much?

    2. Why does football get higher ratings?

    For #1, that’s because playoff series are Best of 7, so the best team pretty much always wins in the end. Thus, keeping your best players healthy and fresh for tough playoff series is way more important than fighting for a higher seed in the first round (you’re gonna have to beat most of the other top contenders along the way anyway). What particularly turbocharged this mindset is that some of the most iconic players and teams of the 2010s (LeBron and the San Antonio Spurs, for example) became uniquely infamous for sitting out loads of regular season games for this reason. While on the other hand, the 2016 Golden State Warriors, who by all statistics were the best basketball team to ever step onto a non-Olympic court, pushed hard to set the regular season wins record (and got it) but ended up stumbling in the playoffs (got beat by LeBron in the Finals after *nearly* losing to an extremely physical OKC team in the semifinals who just pushed them around with superior size to intentionally try to wear out their star players and really should have won that series).

    For #2, the main thing is that football is appointment viewing and other sports are not. Football teams play once a week at relatively predictable times, and every game is season-changingly important. Everyone in America knows that Sunday afternoon is NFL time, even if you’re not a football fan. Meanwhile for basketball, hockey, etc, they play multiple games per week, always on different days and time slots, so not only is every game way less important, but also you have to specifically seek out when and where your team is playing instead of just coming home from Sunday brunch and turning on the TV. NFL takes a lot of the effort out of watching and thus gains a lot of casual viewers that other sports miss.

  27. I’m a baseball fan that watches 140-160 games a year. At least with that sport only 12 teams get in.

    I know there is a play in tournament now but I count it. 20 teams out of 30 to play beyond the regular season is too many.

  28. I still don’t care. My list
    1.College Football
    2. NFL
    3. MLB
    4. NCAA basketball (March Madness only)
    5. Hockey
    6. Is there an Olympics this year??
    6.NBA

  29. When the NBA starts in the fall/autumn at the end of October, it’s the busiest time of year in pro sports in the US. The NFL is about halfway through and the battle for playoff spots is heating up, college football is about a month a way from conference championships and bowl selection, MLB is wrapping up the World Series, the NHL has just a started its season a couple weeks ago, and the MLS playoffs are happening also. And since football has a much shorter schedule each game is way more important, and that’s who gets the majority of attention until January and February.

    After the Super Bowl though it’s just NBA and NHL (and college basketball) really in the US and Canada. Once the trade deadline and all star weekend has passed, playing for home advantage in the playoffs feels more urgent unless a team has clear lead to a 1st seed. I’d say college basketball has an even more extreme situation where it’s feels overshadowed until college football is done and then suddenly you have a lot more interest as you get to the conference tournaments and March Madness at which point everyone is trying to learn about every somewhat obscure college that somehow made the tournament.

  30. Over half of the teams in the league make it to the playoffs, so why bother watching the regular season since there’s a high probability your team will be one of them. Unless you’re a Spurs fan.

  31. Each game is less important as there’s more of them. More specifically, each game is treated as less important by the teams and players and that’s a turnoff for fans.

    In my personal opinion, and I assume this is a minority opinion, I don’t like the explosion of offense across the league. I just don’t like to watch 138-131 games. I would much rather watch a 73-67 college game where it feels like each bucket matters and each score is more meaningful.

    Personally, I think they need to bring back hand checking and and look at the lane violation rules to bring balance back into the game, but that’s just me

  32. I watch every single Trail Blazers game on league pass, and I’ll tell you, it can be a SLOG, especially when your team is rebuilding. Also, the first half of the NBA season takes place during NFL season. What I’ve actually heard is that nobody cares about the NBA until Christmas, or until the all-star break, or until the trade deadline.

  33. Well, it’s a few things:

    1) the regular season is long, and has become even more devalued as of late in terms of teams/players not taking it seriously
    2) the discourse nowadays within NBA media basically makes it to where no accomplishment matters until playoffs
    3) usually the league is much less competitive generally than other leagues, where realistically only a few teams (sometimes literally 1-2) have a chance of winning the championship, which further devalues it and makes certain markets apathetic if they’re not in that group
    4) more teams feel comfortable tanking, which isn’t nearly as common in the NFL and isn’t celebrated like it is in the NBA
    5) I think less people care about it generally (playoffs or otherwise) due to the perception of it being a more progressive league. Not saying I think that is fair or agree cause I don’t, but there are definitely ppl who think that way about it

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