National Basketball Association Commissioner Adam Silver is dismissing the steep dive in TV ratings the league has suffered over the last few years in a new interview.
Last week, sports broadcaster Colin Cowherd noted that the NBA’s TV ratings have decreased 48 percent over the last 12 years. He attributed that to Silver’s inability to guide the league to connect with “regular Americans” and cater instead to far-left activists. Cowherd likened this collapse to the similar state of the Democratic Party, which lost middle America in the recent presidential elections.
But Silver is dismissing the ratings flop and insisting that it is just a symptom of a change in how Americans access their media. And in his interview with The Athletic, Silver blew it all off, saying that “ratings are down a bit.”
Silver went on to note that ratings are down “double digits” for all of cable TV and the big three networks and that people’s way of viewing sports is quickly changing in this new world of sports viewership. He also claimed that viewership for men’s and women’s college basketball is down.
“We’re almost at the inflection point where people are watching more programming on streaming than they are in traditional television,” Silver said.
He continued, saying, “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. So, we have to pay a lot of attention,” Silver concluded.
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