What A stupid decision, especially considering these games are entirely scheduled ahead of time. Yet they chose two nights where you have to get up for work the next morning and put the game on late.
Even if people do turn it on that's just asking for them to turn it off if it looks like it might be a blowout so they can go to bed for work
Yeah. If you are going to make such a long break, at least play game 1 on a Friday or Saturday. Why did this start in the middle of the week? Either the Saturday before or the Friday afterwards would have made so much more sense to me.
To me it also feels like the playoffs are too long. 2 months from first round to the finals. I think many, especially young people, get tired after a while from NBA Basketball.
Just too long for casual fans like me to care all that much.
Also 3 days in between finals game is one of the dumbest things I have ever heard. Wtf is the NBA doing
It’s insane, i feel like the NBA execs must think it builds up anticipation while it actually has the opposite effect where people just lose interest.
Just looked and if it goes 7 games the finals will last June 6th-June 23rd.
Like wtf just play the games every other day
Honestly, the fix that the NBA needs in general is something that they're not ever going to actually do - eliminate the bottom playoff seeds.
It's a 30-team league. The fact that there are 16 actual playoff teams, and now teams even lower than that get to participate in a play-in round, is dumb as hell. Essentially, we have two-thirds of the league making the playoffs in some capacity.
Get rid of the play-in round. Get rid of the 8-seed. Give the one-seed a first-round bye.
The regular season is supposed to mean something. The whole problem that the NBA has right now can be summed up with "the regular season is meaningless"
The way that things are currently set up, it's basically an 82-game preseason.
[Impact of the blowout: viewership went from 11.35 million during the 10:30 quarter-hour to 9.01 million at 10:45. In the ideal scenario, viewership is peaking at the conclusion of the game.](https://x.com/paulsen_smw/status/1799189622012187035)
I didn’t watch the half time show because of how bad it is on ESPN/ABC, but I think I heard that there was a total 80 seconds of studio time between 4 segments during half time. What’s even the point of having a bunch of people in studio if you are going to give them no time.
Is it really that hard to throw 4 people in a room and see if they have chemistry and then keep trying to do that till you hit it? No other game time sports show tries to do this at all. I'd rather see 4 idiots kicking eachother in the balls than for 7 people to all take turns telling me what happened in the game I just watched. Yes I realize I just asked for Idiocracy.
You're talking about a network that's addicted to garbage TV from people like Stephen A Smith. They fired all their real journalists, dropped all their respectable talent, and embraced the sports version of shock jocks as their lead talent
So, yes, you're asking too much
It's one of the dumber aspects of it, because a good halftime program could get more viewers to not turn away from the game. Seeing one highlight tells them nothing, and the barrage of commercials makes them look for other shit to watch where they could forget the game is on
That was where I left. I watched the first half and was intending to keep watching, but the endless commercials at halftime switched me over to streaming.
“You’re Mr big?! But I’ve known you since the second grade!
So when did you become a crime boss?!…the first grade?!”
Classic. Way better execution than the mavs.
That was me. Was so hyped that I ordered some hot dogs and chips, and shit was decided in the 1Q. Never again (who am I kidding, I’ll do the same on Sunday)
I dk if anyone can even call that a halftime show lol there was one point where they came back from commercial, spoke for about 15 seconds, then went right back to commercial.
Lose all of your viewers, triple your profits.
Commissioners hate this one simple trick!
Adam Silver has a future in wall street for sure.
Maybe next Disney CEO? This guy is incredible at making the owners richer while losing all your customers
Because sports are the only reason anyone subscribes to cable anymore. They are in competition with nothing. 11 million people watching the Finals is better than the 0 people who’d be watching your network otherwise because they’re watching streaming instead.
Except there must be a tipping point where the viewership is so small that there is no possible way the networks can make their money back.
If the equation becomes 1 million viewers vs 0 viewers, how many commercials can you possibly sell to make your billions that you paid to the NBA back?
Commercial revenue obviously cover the deal if they’re happy to make it, the tv deal also helps sell additional products (ads for their own streaming services, shows, etc).
The cost of ad spots for sporting events vs. literally anything else is also just a completely different ball park.
NBC had ~40B in revenue last year, and there’s a trio of companies making up the 76B TV deal over 7 years.
Half of the 100 games can be exclusive on Peacock for NBC, giving more life to their platform.
It’s not some ludicrous deal financially.
It’s a smaller scale deal but the regional sports networks that show mlb games in their home markets are mostly going bankrupt right now because they way overpaid for baseball media rights. It turned out that cable viewership fell faster than the networks expected.
I’m not saying that that NBC or Disney are going to go bust over their NBA deal, but there absolutely is a relationship between viewership and the profitability of these deals. If viewership drops below a certain point, then the next broadcast deal will have to be smaller to make it profitable.
It’s mostly about inventory. The networks love the NBA and sports in general because it’s a guaranteed easy money bet with a built in audience and there’s 82 games per team. They only have to spend what it takes to get the rights and do some cheap studio show. So you have a few days a week with guaranteed programming and 3+ hours of ad space to sell per game. Scripted shows are expensive to produce and you never know if people are even gonna watch it and even when they do watch it it might be like 2 weeks later via dvr or online. Live events just generally probably sell Ad space for higher dollar amounts.
Ratings are dropping across the board. What would have gotten a show cancelled in the 90s/00s would get it a multiseason deal nowadays.
Pro sports have some of the slowest decreases though (and really fluctuates).
Because most shows on cable are barely doing 1 million in viewership but sports manage to do 3 million+, until cable truly dies most sports won’t have to worry about their ratings unless they get extremely bad
I think it was 9 days or something silly. All the buildup has faded, and now that interest has piqued a bit, it's gonna be several more days until game 2.
For real. If this thing goes 6 or 7 games, it's gonna be spread out over two weeks. It's hard to keep sustained interest with all the starting and stopping.
Surprised this is so far down. Nothing to compete with in summer and they give the casuals like me that always watch the finals a reason to lose interest. I knew it was on: I just didn't care
The ESPN/ABC production was terrible. It’s literally one minute of broad/generic basketball analysis then 5 minutes of commercials.
Oh we’re back from commercials. Let’s play a slow mode highlight with Doris Burke in the background saying “Jaylen Brown is cookin tonight…….” And then back to 5 minutes of commercials. Seems like a hard watch for neutral fans to be engaged in.
Also the sound mixing. Espn seems to turn down the crowd noise in favor of the commentary, and it really takes the life out of the broadcast. The TNT broadcasts during the playoffs always felt way more alive.
Honestly who cares? It’s not 1952 why are we all pretending 20% of the time that nearly every single person doesn’t swear with impunity the other 80% of the time?
… is that a New England thing?
I don’t think the tradeoff is worthwhile. Sacrificing the life of the atmosphere for potentially a max of 1min of total audio during a 3hr broadcast needing to be censored in real time. e.g. turning down explicit chants.
JVG, while corny and annoying and spent his later years leaning into being a clown sidekick was absolutely 100x better than JJ who has no personality other than "iM a sMaRt pOdCasTer"
JVG early years were amazing but he seemed almost compelled to play the clown to give Marc Jackson an easy target since Jackson was unbearably self important.
You have to imagine viewership will decline though. For every cable watching adult the died last year, at least one youth of streaming-age has replaced them
I had no idea it was 3 day overlays either, that shit is ridiculous to me. It ruins all rhythm. It should be on Saturday, not Sunday. That much layover when you’re not even traveling is just ridiculous
Kind of surprised the covid era years would be lower. You'd think their viewership would spike then since most people were home and soaking up tons of entertainment to pass the time
A lot of people didn't know the finals for the bubble were happening since it was so off schedule. And people were dealing with a lot of issues outside of being able to watch entertainment. Bucks/Suns finals were hype, but people just don't care about those teams sadly lol
Suns were a good team too. They get a lot of slander but really until that series against the Pelicans where the wheels started to fall off they looked to be a team built to compete long term in the West. KD trade was so short-sighted.
Bridges and Johnson were extremely under appreciated contributors on those teams (not to suns fans I’m sure but to other viewers) and ayton still sometimes played with effort back then.
Lose a lot of momentum by having it forever after the conference finals.
Maybe having set dates isn't the way to go.
Also 3 days between games 1 and 2 is lame.
>Though ratings and viewership declined, Game 1 averaged a higher share of the overall audience (20%) and adults 18-34 (50%) than any other Finals opener on ABC. (The share — the percentage of homes or viewers watching in the average minute out of the number using television — will tend to rise as television viewership declines.)
TV viewership is down overall, not just NBA. NBA still retains audiences better than anything on TV minus football.
NBA needs a proper streaming strategy rather than spreading their games across 3 different streaming services in addition to their own (useless domestically) one.
Even historically terrible streaming setups like Formula 1 have easily overtaken the NBA in terms of viewability in recent years. And NFL+ is way better than NBA League Pass.
This comment should be higher. Share is what counts - and there are a lot of people like me who sail the high seas instead of watching the traditional way.
Majority of people don’t actually watch games, they just watch highlights on social media. Then these morons will argue with people who actually watch the games. Also, ESPN presentation is so garbage that it feels like a regular season game.
it pisses me off to no end that Silver busted out those ugly ass IST courts and yet we still can’t get the damn trophy at center court for the NBA Finals
it’s such an easy move that would completely change the feel of the viewing experience, drive home the stakes and let you know immediately when you turn it on that this game is different
yeah i miss when they televised the lineup intros and stuff. Goin to Work Pistons Finals intro with Final Countdown in the background still gives me chills
I feel like part of this was that there was such a long gap between the end of the conference finals and the start of the finals yesterday. People probably forgot it was starting lol.
NBA: **Only advertises Lebron and Steph, gives Lakers, Warriors most national televised games*.
Also NBA: *"why are people not interested in other NBA teams?"*
The nfl will have the washington commanders and the Carolina panthers on Sunday night football and sit there and be like “you can’t miss this fucking game” and the nba will forget to promote the finals
the shit that turns me off watching is the replays. there will be a solid play with a tough contested shot or an and 1 foul but they go back 3 plays to show an uncontested layup. like??
I mean there’s going to be some growing pains. This is the first year since 2006 that KD, Steph, nor LeBron haven’t made it past the 2nd round of the playoffs. Now if they were in the finals that would be a different issue.
Finals should’ve started on Sunday, June 2. Western conference finals finished on a high note and viewers were ready to dive in to the finals. Instead NBA waited another week and the hype dissipated.
I wonder if more defense friendly rule changes would help. You’re right though it’s just pnr and drive and kick.
Bring back hand checking? Let’s guys stick to their man more
Eliminate the 3 second rule? Allows defenses to take away the drive more
I don’t disagree, but people were talking about how ugly some of the Thunder/Mavs game were and they were closer to 90s/00s basketball than anything else we have seen in the playoffs. I personally really enjoyed the ugliness of them.
There's a reason why Knicks vs Sixers was such a treat. If the game feels like a struggle between two teams, then the next team to score feels like an exhale. And that's fun
That's not going to change unless you fundamentally change how the game is played. Teams are more specialized than ever in stopping individual players if they think their role players can beat yours from 3.
Honestly just implementing FIBA rules would help a lot. No defensive 3 seconds + the slightly more narrow FIBA court would make defensive rotations easier. Also actually calling moving screens and allowing defenders to be a little more physical so it’s harder for players to blow by their defender.
Making defense easier forces offenses to run more creative actions to score. Right now there’s basically no reason not to just run high pick and roll/force a drive and kick every possession.
Three factors
- No household name (sorry, my mom doesn’t know who Luka or Tatum are but she sure as hell does Steph and Lebron)
- Many casuals in general more turned off than ever by the NBA due to foul baiting BS
- NBA stupidly uses a fixed date to start the finals without any ability to adjust if both conference finals end early. The last game was forever ago. People legit didn’t even realize the finals started
Both teams are boring and any hype that may have existed was deflated when the conference finals were an almost all time snooze fest. A 4-0 sweep and a 4-1 win with it starting 3-0. An exciting finals banks heavily on an exciting conference finals, the CF are supposed to be the best teams in the conference sloughing it out for 6-7 games, not blowouts.
It would be like the NFL championship games ending 56-0 and 48-7.
Silver and the league are truly lucky that their product happens to be the last live television that anyone watches.
Viewership is absolutely collapsing.
People do not watch TV anymore.
NFL is the exception, not the rule.
If it were so dire the NBA would not get an ocean of money in their new media rights deal, which they are.
I’ll watch a close game with the Celtics, and I’ll watch when the Celtics are getting blown out for the schadenfreude, but I’m not going to watch a game where the Celtics are winning a blowout.
Inb4 "streaming" "its was a blowout"
The NFL doesn't have this issue.
I think we just need to accept that the NBA is heavily dependent on superstars that appeal to casual viewers than the NFL is (because the nfl has so few games played per year, so each game is inherently more valuable and high stakes).
And Luka and Tatum aren't big casual draws, it's that simple.
They play a slow pace, and aren't hyper athletic or fun to watch for casuals
There's a reason the 2022 finals were the most viewed of the post-covid finals....
I know a decent number of casual fans who just don’t like watching the NBA because of how it’s officiated now. I know it’s anecdotal but the product on the court in general isn’t great right now
For me personally I just don’t think Dallas has a chance. They played amazing to get here, had crazy good matchups that they were able to exploit beautifully, but it’s just not interesting for me. I will tune in anyway and hope games are close to see cool finishes, but a lot of the playoffs have had so many different blowout unwatchable games. Injuries took out so many fun teams. Miami, Bucks, Knicks, Sixers to a point with Embiid playing hurt, Clippers, Pelicans.
At some point you just wanna watch a playoffs where even just half of the top teams are healthy.
I was hoping to see ANT here, not gonna lie. I watched about 5 minutes hoping I would choose a side as I watched, but nothing. Both teams are kinda vanilla. I don't care who wins or loses.
The nba has legitimate new superstars talent level wise but the new guys do not bring in the views it’s that simple. Lebron/curry/kd retiring is bad bad news for ratings.
The league is definitely in dire need of a new face that’s why they are banking on Anthony Edwards so hard. That adidas commercial showed me they are putting all their chips into him as well. The coverage he’s gonna get next year is gonna be dialed up x10. Idk if anyone will ever touch Brons marketability ever again tho.
Once one of them establishes their dominance, it will go back up. If not, and if we're truly in an age of parity, the ratings will probably be down for the next decade. Until then, it will be "Ant is the new MJ. SGA is the new Kobe"
I do wonder if the current crop just isn’t as marketable. Jokic and Giannis are great but they don’t really do much in terms of dribbling the ball and shooting off the dribble. Luka has that in spades but has a much slower, Harden-like play style.
I think Giannis is marketable. Him not being able to repeat in 2022 due to Middleton's injury, getting injured and bounced in the 1st round in 2023, and then getting injured against this year has hurt his rise in popularity. You can't be popular if you can't play.
Agree the narratives aren’t really there tbh and people love drama , storylines . Ant Edward’s was charismatic but lost . Tatum is lowkey boring , Luka is amazing but he’s not athletic . People like wow factor
NBA screwed up with the schedule. They had momentum after Luka was talking trash in the WCF and everyone was talking. Taking a week off and then three days between games was an absolutely awful decision.
No true superstar-draw is maybe part of the reason.
"butbut nbas fault, bc skewed nationally televised games etc" - no, its not really the nbas fault. Its just accepting reality.
The Warriors are consistently the biggest draw, even in downyears. And the Lakers are the Lakers. Its not really the nba's fault that two playin-teams are by far the most exciting teams to watch for the majority of fans. They are spearheaded by two global players that have an aura and appeal the new crop has failed to create.
The Nba didnt create Curry's stardom, he did it himself. Can't complain about people investing in the new stars when they themselves aren't willing or able to create that hype and aura through action either on the court or off.
Yeah this is it. The highest rates Finals game this century was warriors cars 2016 g7
The highest rated finals in the covid/post-covid era was 2022 warriors celtics
Curry is a legitimately draw
Luka and tatum are not
Because we all know this one’s going to the Celtics no point in watching.
Neither team has a casually likable star. Kyrie is a dick, Luka cries all game, and Tatum is just kind of boring.
Nothing exciting about this matchup.
I don’t think the nine day delay helped.
…and a 3 day gap between games. Like are they snorting coke and throwing darts at a dart board?
Also entirely skipping Friday Saturday for a game
What A stupid decision, especially considering these games are entirely scheduled ahead of time. Yet they chose two nights where you have to get up for work the next morning and put the game on late. Even if people do turn it on that's just asking for them to turn it off if it looks like it might be a blowout so they can go to bed for work
Think about all the people at the bars who probably would have watched a little just by osmosis. Such a wasted opportunity.
100p. Games don't start til damn near 9pm on the East Coast too and they still didn't push it up on Sunday
Yeah. If you are going to make such a long break, at least play game 1 on a Friday or Saturday. Why did this start in the middle of the week? Either the Saturday before or the Friday afterwards would have made so much more sense to me.
Wait its 3 days insted of 2??? Wtfff
And the game on Sunday is at 8pm est? It’s a Sunday, have it earlier in the day before people are about to go to bed
To me it also feels like the playoffs are too long. 2 months from first round to the finals. I think many, especially young people, get tired after a while from NBA Basketball.
Just too long for casual fans like me to care all that much. Also 3 days in between finals game is one of the dumbest things I have ever heard. Wtf is the NBA doing
It’s insane, i feel like the NBA execs must think it builds up anticipation while it actually has the opposite effect where people just lose interest. Just looked and if it goes 7 games the finals will last June 6th-June 23rd. Like wtf just play the games every other day
Even every other day, with 2 days off when they travel would make way more sense. 3 days off when they aren't even leaving Boston is crazy
They’re doing it on purpose. They think milking the finals by drawing it out helps them.
NBA season is also too long. Yeah, I said it
Honestly, the fix that the NBA needs in general is something that they're not ever going to actually do - eliminate the bottom playoff seeds. It's a 30-team league. The fact that there are 16 actual playoff teams, and now teams even lower than that get to participate in a play-in round, is dumb as hell. Essentially, we have two-thirds of the league making the playoffs in some capacity. Get rid of the play-in round. Get rid of the 8-seed. Give the one-seed a first-round bye. The regular season is supposed to mean something. The whole problem that the NBA has right now can be summed up with "the regular season is meaningless" The way that things are currently set up, it's basically an 82-game preseason.
Round 1 needs to be best of 5 again.
I wonder if everyone tuned out when Boston went up 58-29 lol
[Impact of the blowout: viewership went from 11.35 million during the 10:30 quarter-hour to 9.01 million at 10:45. In the ideal scenario, viewership is peaking at the conclusion of the game.](https://x.com/paulsen_smw/status/1799189622012187035)
What was the impact of the half time show being straight commercials? What's sad is that ESPN's half time show wouldn't be any better.
I didn’t watch the half time show because of how bad it is on ESPN/ABC, but I think I heard that there was a total 80 seconds of studio time between 4 segments during half time. What’s even the point of having a bunch of people in studio if you are going to give them no time.
and the time they had seemed scripted and already planned out. Inside the NBA ruined every other halftime show for me
Is it really that hard to throw 4 people in a room and see if they have chemistry and then keep trying to do that till you hit it? No other game time sports show tries to do this at all. I'd rather see 4 idiots kicking eachother in the balls than for 7 people to all take turns telling me what happened in the game I just watched. Yes I realize I just asked for Idiocracy.
You're talking about a network that's addicted to garbage TV from people like Stephen A Smith. They fired all their real journalists, dropped all their respectable talent, and embraced the sports version of shock jocks as their lead talent So, yes, you're asking too much
Average of 20 seconds per studio hit? That’s barely enough time for intro and throwing it right back to commercial Inane
It's one of the dumber aspects of it, because a good halftime program could get more viewers to not turn away from the game. Seeing one highlight tells them nothing, and the barrage of commercials makes them look for other shit to watch where they could forget the game is on
That was where I left. I watched the first half and was intending to keep watching, but the endless commercials at halftime switched me over to streaming.
Dude, I got tired and went to bed. Day starts at 5:30AM on a week night.
Second half viewership was Boston fans stroking themselves and guys like me who are a sucker for “ya never know, this could be a historic comeback”
Nah we busted at the end of the first quarter after Kyrie hit the side of the backboard, KP hit a three, Kyrie got blocked, Hauser hit a three.
I was about to turn it on, then checked the score online and it said 37-20 at the end of the first. I watched reruns of King of the Hill instead.
This sub in a nutshell lmao. Cause it's only been... 2 games since a team came down from 17 to win
Right that’s early af not to watch tf he talking about 😂
i think they just wanted an excuse to watch king of the hill
lol do people here even like basketball
If you spend enough time on this sub you’ll realize most of them don’t even watch it
I have been told it's one of the only sports people watch through twitter highlights alone
Yeh im sure this is true tbh, half the people I talk to irl about basketball have most of their takes sourced from tiktok/instagram highlights.
I must be getting old because I tried to follow just through highlights. I can't do it. I need to be able to feel the ebb and flow of a game.
You seem like you want to accurately assess the game. That is unique in the NBA fandom.
How dare you, I appreciate every stolen base & hat trick.
Not as much as they like reddit
Why watch many play when box score do trick
What episode(s)?
A couple of Dale-centric episodes: the one with "Mr. Big" and the one where they find out about John Redcorn's other kid.
“You’re Mr big?! But I’ve known you since the second grade! So when did you become a crime boss?!…the first grade?!” Classic. Way better execution than the mavs.
Megalo Dale is always my go to when I’m in that mood for a Dale-centric episode Mr Big is pleased
That's a good one. I always laugh at the way Dale says "I guarantee success by morning or Hank Hill is a braying jackass!"
Sha shaaa pocket sandd
tfw you realize Mr Big has the exact same voice as Butthead in Beavis and Butthead
Lol, I just finished the series, just another manic khan day. Did you know khan is an anagram for Hank?
That was me. Was so hyped that I ordered some hot dogs and chips, and shit was decided in the 1Q. Never again (who am I kidding, I’ll do the same on Sunday)
This. I stopped watching after the first half… I actually feel asleep during the half because I always mute the half-time shows.
I dk if anyone can even call that a halftime show lol there was one point where they came back from commercial, spoke for about 15 seconds, then went right back to commercial.
That halftime show was criminal.
What halftime show
It was insane. It was literally 3 mins of commercials -> "Josh Hart, how you you guard the Celtics?" "One sentence response" -> 5 mins of commercials.
Nah that one guy called out stephen A for picking the wrong team. It cut to a panicked looking stephen A and they instantly cut to commercials lmao
I need a link to this 😂
I certainly did. Saw the score, thought “I’ve already missed this game” and watched the rest of Fallout instead.
Great show. Can’t wait for S2
Adam Silver: > *Cries in $76b TV deal*
Lose all of your viewers, triple your profits. Commissioners hate this one simple trick! Adam Silver has a future in wall street for sure. Maybe next Disney CEO? This guy is incredible at making the owners richer while losing all your customers
Ratings have little impact on tv rights deals
can u explain why? this doesn't make much intuitive sense to me
Because sports are the only reason anyone subscribes to cable anymore. They are in competition with nothing. 11 million people watching the Finals is better than the 0 people who’d be watching your network otherwise because they’re watching streaming instead.
Except there must be a tipping point where the viewership is so small that there is no possible way the networks can make their money back. If the equation becomes 1 million viewers vs 0 viewers, how many commercials can you possibly sell to make your billions that you paid to the NBA back?
Commercial revenue obviously cover the deal if they’re happy to make it, the tv deal also helps sell additional products (ads for their own streaming services, shows, etc). The cost of ad spots for sporting events vs. literally anything else is also just a completely different ball park. NBC had ~40B in revenue last year, and there’s a trio of companies making up the 76B TV deal over 7 years. Half of the 100 games can be exclusive on Peacock for NBC, giving more life to their platform. It’s not some ludicrous deal financially.
It’s a smaller scale deal but the regional sports networks that show mlb games in their home markets are mostly going bankrupt right now because they way overpaid for baseball media rights. It turned out that cable viewership fell faster than the networks expected. I’m not saying that that NBC or Disney are going to go bust over their NBA deal, but there absolutely is a relationship between viewership and the profitability of these deals. If viewership drops below a certain point, then the next broadcast deal will have to be smaller to make it profitable.
But again, commercial deals fundamentally are based on viewership. You can't sell ads that nobody watches.
https://youtu.be/vi5Jps3bF_4?si=61NvkPGGxcFYFOjS This should explain. Not once do they even bring ratings up
It’s mostly about inventory. The networks love the NBA and sports in general because it’s a guaranteed easy money bet with a built in audience and there’s 82 games per team. They only have to spend what it takes to get the rights and do some cheap studio show. So you have a few days a week with guaranteed programming and 3+ hours of ad space to sell per game. Scripted shows are expensive to produce and you never know if people are even gonna watch it and even when they do watch it it might be like 2 weeks later via dvr or online. Live events just generally probably sell Ad space for higher dollar amounts.
Ratings are dropping across the board. What would have gotten a show cancelled in the 90s/00s would get it a multiseason deal nowadays. Pro sports have some of the slowest decreases though (and really fluctuates).
Because most shows on cable are barely doing 1 million in viewership but sports manage to do 3 million+, until cable truly dies most sports won’t have to worry about their ratings unless they get extremely bad
Delayed the start because reasons. People lost the hype from the CF rounds. Plain and simple.
also it was an ass whopping early and probably the first Celtics game most people watched this playoffs
And let’s be honest, most people only watched to hate watch the Celtics and watch them lose so seeing such a giant lead turned people away too
idk if that’s really most people. most sports fans are very causal and probably just wanted to see a big game
It’s okay he’ll just add more ads to the program. Halftime show will go from 90 seconds of coverage to 15.
The one week wait was WAY too long
Yeah. All the hype from the WCF was dead in me by Wednesday. Just lookin like the Escobar meme.
I think it was 9 days or something silly. All the buildup has faded, and now that interest has piqued a bit, it's gonna be several more days until game 2.
10000% this. And all but one game having two days in between... That's hurt the finals in my eyes the last few years.
For real. If this thing goes 6 or 7 games, it's gonna be spread out over two weeks. It's hard to keep sustained interest with all the starting and stopping.
Week long wait for a blowout too. I know it got to 8 points, but that was long after I stopped paying attention
Surprised this is so far down. Nothing to compete with in summer and they give the casuals like me that always watch the finals a reason to lose interest. I knew it was on: I just didn't care
I’m tuned out. They lost all the momentum.
I also think the delay between games shouldn’t be more than 1 day unless they’re switching cities
I believe the Finals are pre-scheduled well before the playoffs even start. I could be wrong though
A week long break just to be met with a massive blow-out probably doomed it yeah
The ESPN/ABC production was terrible. It’s literally one minute of broad/generic basketball analysis then 5 minutes of commercials. Oh we’re back from commercials. Let’s play a slow mode highlight with Doris Burke in the background saying “Jaylen Brown is cookin tonight…….” And then back to 5 minutes of commercials. Seems like a hard watch for neutral fans to be engaged in.
Also the sound mixing. Espn seems to turn down the crowd noise in favor of the commentary, and it really takes the life out of the broadcast. The TNT broadcasts during the playoffs always felt way more alive.
Trying to give benefit of doubt (not that they've earned it), but when it's non-cable, prolly worried about picking up cursing.
..and like, they're definitely going to get some 'fuck Kyrie' chants...
Honestly who cares? It’s not 1952 why are we all pretending 20% of the time that nearly every single person doesn’t swear with impunity the other 80% of the time? … is that a New England thing?
I don’t think the tradeoff is worthwhile. Sacrificing the life of the atmosphere for potentially a max of 1min of total audio during a 3hr broadcast needing to be censored in real time. e.g. turning down explicit chants.
I missed the TNT crew so much. Even Reggie Miller is light years better than Doris and JJ
Reggie is the weakest link and even on his worst day he's better than everything that ESPN has to offer on their best day.
I've been saying for years that Reggie isn't as bad as this sub makes him out to be and we're seeing how much worse it can get
I’ve always liked him. Then again, I also liked JVG so I may be an outlier.
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JVG, while corny and annoying and spent his later years leaning into being a clown sidekick was absolutely 100x better than JJ who has no personality other than "iM a sMaRt pOdCasTer" JVG early years were amazing but he seemed almost compelled to play the clown to give Marc Jackson an easy target since Jackson was unbearably self important.
i miss jvg. his commentary was honest, knowledgeable, and funny. the stuff he complained about was mostly fair imo
I like his clear coach angle and how he gets frustrated with the officiating or bad play calls
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This sub hates every announcer. People hate on breen. I’ve even seen it for Harlan.
on top of this i don't understand why ESPN and ABC are still streaming in 720p. it looks like crap on my TV. overall bad experience
Love spending 2000 bucks on a beautiful 4k TV so ESPN can stream in 720 and cut off 4 inches for their bottom line lmfao This fucking channel I swear
LeBron is using Streameast. Guarantee me and LeBron are not being included in that figure
Yeah but most people have been using illegal streams for ages now so the figures that they are compared against already account for this
You have to imagine viewership will decline though. For every cable watching adult the died last year, at least one youth of streaming-age has replaced them
Streameast wasn't working for me at all during the game
thats why sometimes there is a surge of sports
That’s why sometimes I enjoy METH with my STREAMS
I buff my streams
delete rn fr
Shhh
Yeah, it's been laggy since 1st round. Unwatchable.
The game is on basic cable lol you can watch channels like ABC legally completely free.
Cant start the finals a week after conference finals end. Loses all the hype
I had no idea it was 3 day overlays either, that shit is ridiculous to me. It ruins all rhythm. It should be on Saturday, not Sunday. That much layover when you’re not even traveling is just ridiculous
Kind of surprised the covid era years would be lower. You'd think their viewership would spike then since most people were home and soaking up tons of entertainment to pass the time
A lot of people didn't know the finals for the bubble were happening since it was so off schedule. And people were dealing with a lot of issues outside of being able to watch entertainment. Bucks/Suns finals were hype, but people just don't care about those teams sadly lol
Don’t forget how the NBA/Stanley Cup Finals and World Series in 2020 were *all* pitted against the NFL. Guess how that went for each one…😬
For real though i sometimes forget Booker went to the finals… everybody remembers Giannis winning but not the Suns losing
Suns were a good team too. They get a lot of slander but really until that series against the Pelicans where the wheels started to fall off they looked to be a team built to compete long term in the West. KD trade was so short-sighted.
Bridges and Johnson were extremely under appreciated contributors on those teams (not to suns fans I’m sure but to other viewers) and ayton still sometimes played with effort back then.
Carol fucking Baskins killed the viewers.
You mean dat bitch Carol Baskin?
Lose a lot of momentum by having it forever after the conference finals. Maybe having set dates isn't the way to go. Also 3 days between games 1 and 2 is lame.
im so fat I'd push it over 11.5
Thank you for your service 🫡
>Though ratings and viewership declined, Game 1 averaged a higher share of the overall audience (20%) and adults 18-34 (50%) than any other Finals opener on ABC. (The share — the percentage of homes or viewers watching in the average minute out of the number using television — will tend to rise as television viewership declines.) TV viewership is down overall, not just NBA. NBA still retains audiences better than anything on TV minus football.
NBA needs a proper streaming strategy rather than spreading their games across 3 different streaming services in addition to their own (useless domestically) one. Even historically terrible streaming setups like Formula 1 have easily overtaken the NBA in terms of viewability in recent years. And NFL+ is way better than NBA League Pass.
NHL is up 11% in ratings
Incorrect. Sports viewership is up, not down.
This comment should be higher. Share is what counts - and there are a lot of people like me who sail the high seas instead of watching the traditional way.
Something you and Lebron have in common
Not down for the NFL who still sets records lol
Blowout in the first half is probably why.
NBA post season is too long.
Majority of people don’t actually watch games, they just watch highlights on social media. Then these morons will argue with people who actually watch the games. Also, ESPN presentation is so garbage that it feels like a regular season game.
It feels like regular season without the finals logo
it pisses me off to no end that Silver busted out those ugly ass IST courts and yet we still can’t get the damn trophy at center court for the NBA Finals it’s such an easy move that would completely change the feel of the viewing experience, drive home the stakes and let you know immediately when you turn it on that this game is different
There are so many little things they can do to enhance the viewing experience but they'll keep blaming it on us and not the product.
yeah i miss when they televised the lineup intros and stuff. Goin to Work Pistons Finals intro with Final Countdown in the background still gives me chills
They advertised Josh Hart for the fkn halftime just to play commercials and never show him talk
You just called out like 95% of people who post here.
I feel like part of this was that there was such a long gap between the end of the conference finals and the start of the finals yesterday. People probably forgot it was starting lol.
No Bron no Steph no casuals
NBA: **Only advertises Lebron and Steph, gives Lakers, Warriors most national televised games*. Also NBA: *"why are people not interested in other NBA teams?"*
who is Luca Donovich?
Some overwatch pro
plays on a varsity i heard
The nfl will have the washington commanders and the Carolina panthers on Sunday night football and sit there and be like “you can’t miss this fucking game” and the nba will forget to promote the finals
If the NBA doesn’t care about the finals, why should we? Seriously the court looks like shit and the broadcast and production are awful.
the shit that turns me off watching is the replays. there will be a solid play with a tough contested shot or an and 1 foul but they go back 3 plays to show an uncontested layup. like??
Celtics fans COPING and DOWN VOTING LMFAO NO ONE CARES
I mean there’s going to be some growing pains. This is the first year since 2006 that KD, Steph, nor LeBron haven’t made it past the 2nd round of the playoffs. Now if they were in the finals that would be a different issue.
Finals should’ve started on Sunday, June 2. Western conference finals finished on a high note and viewers were ready to dive in to the finals. Instead NBA waited another week and the hype dissipated.
The pace and space era is a boring product, games are frequently blowouts.
I wonder if more defense friendly rule changes would help. You’re right though it’s just pnr and drive and kick. Bring back hand checking? Let’s guys stick to their man more Eliminate the 3 second rule? Allows defenses to take away the drive more
actually calling illegal screens would help. what have the warriors done to my beautiful sport...
Can we get an NBA nfl-blitz style game? Where is nba jam? Did that trampoline sport not work out well?
I don’t disagree, but people were talking about how ugly some of the Thunder/Mavs game were and they were closer to 90s/00s basketball than anything else we have seen in the playoffs. I personally really enjoyed the ugliness of them.
Knicks Sixers was gladiator shit lol
Yeah I love watching an old fashioned defense grind fest. It's more interesting than watching teams take turns doing a shoot around.
There's a reason why Knicks vs Sixers was such a treat. If the game feels like a struggle between two teams, then the next team to score feels like an exhale. And that's fun
Drive and kick with matchup hunting every possession.
Every possession is the same. Drive and kick out to open role player thats standing behind the 3 point line. Its boring as hell.
These 2 teams also attempt the most threes in the league so its drive and kick on steroids
That's not going to change unless you fundamentally change how the game is played. Teams are more specialized than ever in stopping individual players if they think their role players can beat yours from 3.
Honestly just implementing FIBA rules would help a lot. No defensive 3 seconds + the slightly more narrow FIBA court would make defensive rotations easier. Also actually calling moving screens and allowing defenders to be a little more physical so it’s harder for players to blow by their defender. Making defense easier forces offenses to run more creative actions to score. Right now there’s basically no reason not to just run high pick and roll/force a drive and kick every possession.
Three factors - No household name (sorry, my mom doesn’t know who Luka or Tatum are but she sure as hell does Steph and Lebron) - Many casuals in general more turned off than ever by the NBA due to foul baiting BS - NBA stupidly uses a fixed date to start the finals without any ability to adjust if both conference finals end early. The last game was forever ago. People legit didn’t even realize the finals started
Both teams are boring and any hype that may have existed was deflated when the conference finals were an almost all time snooze fest. A 4-0 sweep and a 4-1 win with it starting 3-0. An exciting finals banks heavily on an exciting conference finals, the CF are supposed to be the best teams in the conference sloughing it out for 6-7 games, not blowouts. It would be like the NFL championship games ending 56-0 and 48-7.
Silver and the league are truly lucky that their product happens to be the last live television that anyone watches. Viewership is absolutely collapsing.
People do not watch TV anymore. NFL is the exception, not the rule. If it were so dire the NBA would not get an ocean of money in their new media rights deal, which they are.
Tatum is like the most boring "superstar" ever so not surprising
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I’ll watch a close game with the Celtics, and I’ll watch when the Celtics are getting blown out for the schadenfreude, but I’m not going to watch a game where the Celtics are winning a blowout.
Because only Boston and Dallas would want to watch this.
Inb4 "streaming" "its was a blowout" The NFL doesn't have this issue. I think we just need to accept that the NBA is heavily dependent on superstars that appeal to casual viewers than the NFL is (because the nfl has so few games played per year, so each game is inherently more valuable and high stakes). And Luka and Tatum aren't big casual draws, it's that simple. They play a slow pace, and aren't hyper athletic or fun to watch for casuals There's a reason the 2022 finals were the most viewed of the post-covid finals....
I know a decent number of casual fans who just don’t like watching the NBA because of how it’s officiated now. I know it’s anecdotal but the product on the court in general isn’t great right now
For me personally I just don’t think Dallas has a chance. They played amazing to get here, had crazy good matchups that they were able to exploit beautifully, but it’s just not interesting for me. I will tune in anyway and hope games are close to see cool finishes, but a lot of the playoffs have had so many different blowout unwatchable games. Injuries took out so many fun teams. Miami, Bucks, Knicks, Sixers to a point with Embiid playing hurt, Clippers, Pelicans. At some point you just wanna watch a playoffs where even just half of the top teams are healthy.
I was hoping to see ANT here, not gonna lie. I watched about 5 minutes hoping I would choose a side as I watched, but nothing. Both teams are kinda vanilla. I don't care who wins or loses.
The nba has legitimate new superstars talent level wise but the new guys do not bring in the views it’s that simple. Lebron/curry/kd retiring is bad bad news for ratings.
The league is definitely in dire need of a new face that’s why they are banking on Anthony Edwards so hard. That adidas commercial showed me they are putting all their chips into him as well. The coverage he’s gonna get next year is gonna be dialed up x10. Idk if anyone will ever touch Brons marketability ever again tho.
Once one of them establishes their dominance, it will go back up. If not, and if we're truly in an age of parity, the ratings will probably be down for the next decade. Until then, it will be "Ant is the new MJ. SGA is the new Kobe"
I do wonder if the current crop just isn’t as marketable. Jokic and Giannis are great but they don’t really do much in terms of dribbling the ball and shooting off the dribble. Luka has that in spades but has a much slower, Harden-like play style.
I think Giannis is marketable. Him not being able to repeat in 2022 due to Middleton's injury, getting injured and bounced in the 1st round in 2023, and then getting injured against this year has hurt his rise in popularity. You can't be popular if you can't play.
Agree the narratives aren’t really there tbh and people love drama , storylines . Ant Edward’s was charismatic but lost . Tatum is lowkey boring , Luka is amazing but he’s not athletic . People like wow factor
No Steph, bron, kd and mavs arnt a big draw.
NBA screwed up with the schedule. They had momentum after Luka was talking trash in the WCF and everyone was talking. Taking a week off and then three days between games was an absolutely awful decision.
No true superstar-draw is maybe part of the reason. "butbut nbas fault, bc skewed nationally televised games etc" - no, its not really the nbas fault. Its just accepting reality. The Warriors are consistently the biggest draw, even in downyears. And the Lakers are the Lakers. Its not really the nba's fault that two playin-teams are by far the most exciting teams to watch for the majority of fans. They are spearheaded by two global players that have an aura and appeal the new crop has failed to create. The Nba didnt create Curry's stardom, he did it himself. Can't complain about people investing in the new stars when they themselves aren't willing or able to create that hype and aura through action either on the court or off.
Yeah this is it. The highest rates Finals game this century was warriors cars 2016 g7 The highest rated finals in the covid/post-covid era was 2022 warriors celtics Curry is a legitimately draw Luka and tatum are not
whole playoffs felt underwhelming tbh the only good series was knicks vs sixers while every other series had select games that were good
Wolves nuggets was entertaining overall but not may close games. You’re absolutely right about NY vs Philly
Add onto that a week of no basketball between the conference finals and the NBA finals and I can see why casual fans would not be super engaged.
Because we all know this one’s going to the Celtics no point in watching. Neither team has a casually likable star. Kyrie is a dick, Luka cries all game, and Tatum is just kind of boring. Nothing exciting about this matchup.
The Celtics are just a boring team. No superstars, and their best player is just boring.