The Breitbart News reported Sunday, April 18, that the NBA has once again suffered a ratings disaster, with ABC down 45 percent, TNT down 40 percent and ESPN down 20 percent since the 2011-12 season.
The NBA’s plummeting ratings are nothing new. Each of the past two NBA Finals has fallen again and again, with last year’s ratings dropping 51 percent to set an all-time low for the championship game. The worst was the Finals, which dropped nearly 70 percent year-over-year.
So far, NBA games are averaging just 2.83 million viewers, according to The Athletic. For comparison, NBC’s crime drama “The Blacklist,” recent episodes have averaged about 3.3 million viewers, and one of ABC’s most important shows, the medical drama “The Good Doctor,” has averaged more than 4 million weekly viewers. Historically, sports shows have outperformed any regular TV series in terms of viewership.
The collapse of the NBA may not be surprising as recent polls have found that basketball fans feel the NBA has become too wrapped up in politics.
In September, a Harris poll found that 39 percent of respondents who consider themselves sports fans believe the NBA has become too political, and 19 percent said they have been turned off from professional basketball because of the NBA’s deep ties to China (Communist Party).
The NBA’s 2020 season is a heavy-handed celebration of the anti-American Black Lives Matter expensive agenda. But the reaction to people’s leftism may have alarmed NBC Commissioner Adam Silver, as the NBA boss said the season would not show more overt support for Black Lives Matter.
Silver said last October, “My sense is there’s going to be some return to normalcy, and those [political] messages will largely be left to people off the court to deliver. And, I understand people, while on your side, wanting to watch the basketball game is No. 1.”
Still, if the ratings for the 2021 season are any indication, Silver may have understood too late.
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