LAS VEGAS — NBA commissioner Adam Silver acknowledged that TV ratings for his sport are down this season, but said the dip did not equate to a lack of interest in pro basketball.
“If you look at other data points, in terms of our business, for example, we’ve just come off the last two years of the highest attendance in the history of this league,” Silver said Tuesday in an interview with The Athletic and other national outlets before the NBA Cup championship. “We’re at a point where our social media audience is at the highest of any league and continuing to grow exponentially. So, it’s not a lack of interest in this game.”
Through the NBA Cup semifinals, which were played Saturday, viewership of NBA games for the league’s national partners — ESPN, ABC, and TNT — was down 19 percent over the same period last year, according to Sports Media Watch.
Silver’s acknowledgment was a little softer — he said “ratings are down a bit” — but pointed to a broader trend of “cable television viewership is down double digits.” Viewership is also down for men’s college basketball (21 percent), women’s college basketball (38 percent), and the NHL (28 percent), Sports Media Watch reported.
“We’re almost at the inflection point where people are watching more programming on streaming than they are in traditional television,” Silver said. “And it’s a reason why for our new television deals, which will enter into next year, every game is going to be available on a streaming service. And as we move to streaming service, putting aside how the actual game is played on the floor, it’s going to allow us from a production standpoint to do all kinds of things that you can’t do through traditional television. All kinds of new functionality, all kinds of new options and screens that are available.
“The vast majority of people consume us through media, not in person,” Silver said. “So we have to pay a lot of attention.”
The league’s new TV deals, worth $76 billion over 11 years, begin next year. They include ESPN and ABC, NBC and its digital platforms, and Amazon Prime, which is a streaming-only service.
This story will be updated.
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