The Detroit Pistons have been competitive and exciting, so this has been the most enjoyable season in recent memory for fans in the Motor City.
But you wouldn’t know it to listen to some of the broader rhetoric around the league, much of it coming from the league itself, which offers lower ratings as a reason to make changes to the game, most of which no one asked for.
We’ve had the NBA Cup shoved down our throats, an event most fans feel is pointless. We’ve had rule changes to increase scoring even though most fans agree that physical, playoff basketball is the most enjoyable to watch.
We get endless new uniforms and novelty courts, obnoxious music and sound effects during the games, non-stop gambling ads with updated odds from the sideline reporters, none of which most basketball fans care about.
Silver’s most recent brainstorm yielded another horrible idea no one asked for, which is to shorten the quarters to 10 minutes, as surely the answer to the ratings problem is less basketball!
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver floats the idea of changing the game from 12 to 10 minute quarters #NBA pic.twitter.com/ymajYHTgi4
— Dan Patrick Show (@dpshow) January 29, 2025
I have ideas as to why the ratings are down, and it has nothing to do with the sport of basketball, which has a ton of talent and is actually fun to watch for those of us who like basketball.
Quit telling us how bad the NBA is
Do any other sports have pundits who sit around talking about how “horrible” or “unwatchable” their sport is?
Most of the negative narratives about the league come from the very people they’ve hired to talk about it and market it, many of whom spend endless minutes talking about how much better the sport was when they played it.
I don’t get it.
Fans and media run with these narratives, but most of the people I talk to who watch it aren’t dissatisfied with the product at all. They may have some tweaks to improve it, or things they liked better in the past, but basketball is in a good place talent-wise and is far more entertaining than the slugfests from the 90’s (I know, I was there, yet the people who cover it call players “soft” and games “unwatchable” even though the skill level is higher than it's ever been.
It’s a strange way to market your product, but it’s not the main reason ratings are down.
Fans are stealing your games
I’ve been beating this drum forever, but this is the main reason ratings are down.
Younger fans do not have cable tv and are never going to get it, as they are getting all of their content online.
What does the NBA do? Black out home games on League Pass, essentially making it impossible for fans to watch the games without cable. Their choice is either to pay a ton of money for cable tv that they don’t want or steal the games for free on ubiquitous sites that are much better than they used to be (so I hear).
I live outside of the US, so my League Pass is great because I get every game, which I feel is decent value for money. Plenty of other fans feel the same and would buy League Pass if their favorite team wasn’t blacked out.
Since the NBA gets much of its revenue from lucrative TV deals, I am not sure what the answer is here, but it probably starts with selling more of the rights to local markets who can televise the games on free TV.
Stop with the blackouts already, lower the price slightly and you’ll make up a big chunk of that revenue selling the League Pass to fans that are now stealing it. And make big nationally televised games on NBC, ABC or whoever once again. Those used to be events, just like NFL games.
This doesn’t seem that hard, but instead we’ll probably get a four-point half-court shot, 3D instant replays, AI simulations and more things no one asked for. The NBA would be smart to listen to fans for a change instead of telling us what we want.