The NBA has been one of the best league’s around in the field of sports. Every year, the league puts a lot of effort into making the game relevant to watch. And fans truly enjoy the things Commissioner Adam Silver and the Board of Directors do to keep things going. For example, they recently introduced the In-Season Tournament which did fairly well amongst fans. It brought a genuine playoff feeling to the regular season, a change the league needed.
Another sought-after event in the NBA’s regular season calendar is the Christmas Day Games. These games have been taking place since the 1947-48 season. And for over 70+ seasons, fans have been enjoying these games ever since. They’re nothing better than tuning into your local sports channel and watching some of the biggest stars battle it out on the court.
Except that it wasn’t the case with this year’s games, unfortunately. Minority owner of the New York Yankees, Patrick Bet-David, recently revealed a major dip in viewership in Christmas Day Games. He also compared viewership of three games between the NBA and NFL on Christmas Day.
Numbers don’t lie.
The current NBA regular season product absolutely sucks.
NFL gets more viewers in one game than NBA gets in 5 games combined.
That’s embarrassing. 👇🏽 pic.twitter.com/zh7XezDkSf
— Patrick Bet-David (@patrickbetdavid) December 27, 2023
Last year, the NFL averaged 21.9 million views over three games on Christmas Day. The NBA averaged 4.3 million over three games, which is a major gap in comparison. Bet-David said in his post’s caption, “Numbers don’t lie. The current NBA regular season product absolutely sucks. [The] NFL gets more viewers in one game than [the] NBA gets in 5 games combined. That’s embarrassing.” This is certainly an embarrassing deal for the NBA, but there has to an explanation behind it.
Why does the NBA get lower viewership when compared to the NFL?
There are probably several reasons why the NBA averages lower viewership when compared to the NFL. In general, NBA games average anywhere between 1.59 million to 10 million views every game, depending on whether it is a regular season or playoff game. The viewership always fluctuates every season based on things that happen in the league.
The NBA’s decision to make most games paywalled (through league pass) was a bad call.
Not to mention, your local team can only be watched on cable which most people no longer have.
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) December 27, 2023
Fans had a few valid and understandable reasons as to why the NBA faces lower viewership when compared to the NFL. One fan pointed out the fact that several NBA games are only streamed via NBA League Pass. To watch live streams, fans would have to pay a fee to gain access to the website. Secondly, sometimes fans would have to watch their local teams play on cable. Several people do not have access to cable television.
Football games have more significance to them since they’re 17 game seasons & every game counts, hard to gain that interest when there are 8 NBA games on every day
Same with playoffs. NFL is win or go home, meanwhile NBA is best out of 7.
— Ye Streams (@kanyestreams1) December 27, 2023
Additionally, fans also pointed out that the NBA has a longer regular season, which has 82 games. The NFL only has 17 regular season games. In case fans miss certain NBA games, fans will get more opportunities to watch the same matchup again.