During the 2023-2024 basketball season, the NBA averaged 1.6 million viewers per game over the 82 game regular season. While many think this a massive amount of views, it is pretty low compared to prior years.
After COVID-19, the 2020 NBA season, as well as others after, noticed a major drop in viewership. For example, the 2014 through 2017 regular seasons all averaged more than 1.8 million viewers per game, while the 2019 through 2023 regular seasons averaged more than 1.4 million viewers per game.
Although the NBA sees drops in cable television viewership, they do see a massive increase in game attendance. For example, the NBA had a new total regular-season attendance record of 22.5 million.
Compared to the 2022-2023 regular season, attendance ratings went up 2%. This means that the 2023-2024 NBA regular season averaged 18.3k people in attendance per game, while it was just 18.1k during the 2022-2023 regular season.
These statistics could also show that cable doesn’t live up to the hype that it used to, and more people would rather go to the game, instead of staying at home and spending their money on cable platforms like ABC, CBS, or FOX.
To add on, viewers are beginning to transition from cable to streaming platforms like Youtube TV, Prime Video, and Hulu, because those individual platforms are built in within the app.
While many say that the NBA just isn’t as fun as it once was, college basketball is also a main reason for the decline in NBA’s viewership. Multiple sources state that viewers would rather watch college basketball because there is a greater area for upsets, while the NBA is more consistent and there aren’t usually as many big upsets.
To compare the NBA’s viewership to the NCAAM viewership, you can look at the finals/championship. The 2022 NBA finals only peaked at 16.8 million viewers, while the 2023 NCAAM championship game reached an outstanding 18.1 million viewers over just one game, compared to the NBA’s 4-7 games.
Although, a contradicting argument shows that the National Basketball Association isn’t dying like people think, but instead is coming to a steady balance between in-game attendance, and online viewership. With the views going more towards men’s and women’s college basketball, the NBA isn’t going anywhere, as they are still the third most viewed sport in the United States behind the NFL and MLB.
With the disagreements inside and outside the league, of whether or not the NBA is declining, there are many statistics that can be looked at. While fans believe some statistics matter, and others don’t, there is no certain way of seeing if the league is growing or declining in popularity.
