2025 NBA Playoffs Hold Promise of a Ratings Rebound
The NBA Playoffs tip off this weekend, and what may be just as suspenseful as the scores are the numbers the games rack up in TV ratings.
Last year’s postseason registered a not-small 12% ratings decline, and the league won’t want that to repeat itself on the eve of a rights-deal shift that will swap out TNT and bring in NBC and Amazon, as explored in the Variety Intelligence Platform special report “Sports Rights: Streamers vs. TV Networks,” released earlier this month.
At first blush, it might seem discouraging to note that the regular season recently concluded with a 2% dip, but that number needs some context.
First of all, -2% might as well be a positive single-figure increase, considering the NBA is trying to hold on to its TV audience at a time when there’s far more than 2% erosion to linear TV in general. Also, -2% probably comes as a relief to the league given the ratings in the first half of the season were terrible.
So much so that the downturn prompted a lot of hand wringing about the fragile state of the NBA. Enough press people were talking about it, in fact, that Lakers coach JJ Redick, himself a former card-carrying member of the media, noted the volume on this conversation had grown so loud it was probably part of what was fueling the negative perceptions.
The bad buzz seemed to reach an apex at the midseason All-Star Game, which was yet another rudderless mess that the league still needs to figure out how to fix. But then a funny thing happened: As NBA commissioner Adam Silver noted in an appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show” this week, ratings for the second half of the season surged — and that makes the -2% a victory.
Why the ramp-up? A lot of fingers point to the infamous Luka Doncic trade as the prime catalyst, and while it surely reignited dormant interest, it probably doesn’t account entirely for the ratings rebound.
There’s a simpler explanation: Just like Major League Baseball has problems drawing interest to its own massive 162-game regular season, where hundreds of games don’t have any real impact on the standings, the NBA’s 82-game season has a similar inherent problem.
That’s why the NBA Cup in-season tournament was added a few years ago, and while I wouldn’t call it a slam dunk, its whole reason for existence is to pump some competitive energy into the season earlier. There are just too many games to garner any emotional investment, but once the season advances enough and competitive narratives truly kick in, the 2024-25 campaign proves fan interest comes roaring back.
But now that we’re at the doorstep of the postseason, avoiding another 12% decline rests entirely on how interesting these playoffs can be.
SEE ALSO: Celtics Sale Proves Media’s New Pot of Gold Lies in Sports Teams as Mega-Brands
To some degree, it can’t be overlooked that the pro U.S. basketball game has certain inherent issues that the heightened stakes on the road to championship don’t really solve: too many lopsided scores in blowout games, too many games descending into three-point shooting contests and too many momentum-killing referee whistles that interrupt the flow late in games.
Still, all of that can be overcome if interesting narratives emerge early and often in the postseason that transcend the interest of the hardcore b-ball fans and entice the casual viewers who don’t have the patience to track the overlong regular season.
Certain Broadcasting 101 fundamentals don’t change: There’s no better magnet for attention than star athletes from major markets going head to head. In seasons past, the friendly rivalry between the games’ two premier attractions — the Los Angeles Lakers’ LeBron James and the Golden State Warriors’ Steph Curry — has been a ratings godsend. It didn’t happen last year, but there’s a very good chance these teams will meet this time in the second round, which will have a halo effect on the rest of the schedule.
Luckily, the league is awash in stars even below the A+ tier occupied by James and Curry, and the playoffs tends to both mint new ones and elevate budding ones.
There’s also a nice parity in skill level among teams across the league that could keep things competitively interesting, as opposed to any one dynastic force looming head and shoulders over the rest, a dynamic that has marked previous NBA eras. And the rights holders who just paid roughly triple the cost of the last rights deals should aim to keep it that way.
There are at least eight teams in the 2024-25 season with a realistic shot at a championship. Six are in the Western Conference alone, where there’s virtually no difference in the win-loss records among the teams seeded third through eighth.
What may be the most intriguing theme of the season is that while conventional wisdom holds that it’s the experienced teams that thrive in a postseason where the style of play intensifies so qualitatively differently it might as well be a different league than the regular season, the teams with the best records — Cleveland Cavaliers, Oklahoma City Thunder and Houston Rockets — have rosters that skew very young, which leave them vulnerable to upsets.
Or not. And therein lies the drama. Much as fan conspiracists on social media spin elaborate tales of predetermined outcomes engineered by conniving referees being manipulated like striped marionettes by the league commissioner, the action on the court is not scripted. Whether the NBA can recover its playoffs mojo is up to the only force mightier than the players or the owners: the capricious whims of the basketball gods.
Now dig into the related VIP+ subscriber report …
Last year’s postseason registered a not-small 12% ratings decline, and the league won’t want that to repeat itself on the eve of a rights-deal shift that will swap out TNT and bring in NBC and Amazon, as explored in the Variety Intelligence Platform special report “Sports Rights: Streamers vs. TV Networks,” released earlier this month.
At first blush, it might seem discouraging to note that the regular season recently concluded with a 2% dip, but that number needs some context.
First of all, -2% might as well be a positive single-figure increase, considering the NBA is trying to hold on to its TV audience at a time when there’s far more than 2% erosion to linear TV in general. Also, -2% probably comes as a relief to the league given the ratings in the first half of the season were terrible.
So much so that the downturn prompted a lot of hand wringing about the fragile state of the NBA. Enough press people were talking about it, in fact, that Lakers coach JJ Redick, himself a former card-carrying member of the media, noted the volume on this conversation had grown so loud it was probably part of what was fueling the negative perceptions.
The bad buzz seemed to reach an apex at the midseason All-Star Game, which was yet another rudderless mess that the league still needs to figure out how to fix. But then a funny thing happened: As NBA commissioner Adam Silver noted in an appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show” this week, ratings for the second half of the season surged — and that makes the -2% a victory.
Why the ramp-up? A lot of fingers point to the infamous Luka Doncic trade as the prime catalyst, and while it surely reignited dormant interest, it probably doesn’t account entirely for the ratings rebound.
There’s a simpler explanation: Just like Major League Baseball has problems drawing interest to its own massive 162-game regular season, where hundreds of games don’t have any real impact on the standings, the NBA’s 82-game season has a similar inherent problem.
That’s why the NBA Cup in-season tournament was added a few years ago, and while I wouldn’t call it a slam dunk, its whole reason for existence is to pump some competitive energy into the season earlier. There are just too many games to garner any emotional investment, but once the season advances enough and competitive narratives truly kick in, the 2024-25 campaign proves fan interest comes roaring back.
But now that we’re at the doorstep of the postseason, avoiding another 12% decline rests entirely on how interesting these playoffs can be.
SEE ALSO: Celtics Sale Proves Media’s New Pot of Gold Lies in Sports Teams as Mega-Brands
To some degree, it can’t be overlooked that the pro U.S. basketball game has certain inherent issues that the heightened stakes on the road to championship don’t really solve: too many lopsided scores in blowout games, too many games descending into three-point shooting contests and too many momentum-killing referee whistles that interrupt the flow late in games.
Still, all of that can be overcome if interesting narratives emerge early and often in the postseason that transcend the interest of the hardcore b-ball fans and entice the casual viewers who don’t have the patience to track the overlong regular season.
Certain Broadcasting 101 fundamentals don’t change: There’s no better magnet for attention than star athletes from major markets going head to head. In seasons past, the friendly rivalry between the games’ two premier attractions — the Los Angeles Lakers’ LeBron James and the Golden State Warriors’ Steph Curry — has been a ratings godsend. It didn’t happen last year, but there’s a very good chance these teams will meet this time in the second round, which will have a halo effect on the rest of the schedule.
Luckily, the league is awash in stars even below the A+ tier occupied by James and Curry, and the playoffs tends to both mint new ones and elevate budding ones.
There’s also a nice parity in skill level among teams across the league that could keep things competitively interesting, as opposed to any one dynastic force looming head and shoulders over the rest, a dynamic that has marked previous NBA eras. And the rights holders who just paid roughly triple the cost of the last rights deals should aim to keep it that way.
There are at least eight teams in the 2024-25 season with a realistic shot at a championship. Six are in the Western Conference alone, where there’s virtually no difference in the win-loss records among the teams seeded third through eighth.
What may be the most intriguing theme of the season is that while conventional wisdom holds that it’s the experienced teams that thrive in a postseason where the style of play intensifies so qualitatively differently it might as well be a different league than the regular season, the teams with the best records — Cleveland Cavaliers, Oklahoma City Thunder and Houston Rockets — have rosters that skew very young, which leave them vulnerable to upsets.
Or not. And therein lies the drama. Much as fan conspiracists on social media spin elaborate tales of predetermined outcomes engineered by conniving referees being manipulated like striped marionettes by the league commissioner, the action on the court is not scripted. Whether the NBA can recover its playoffs mojo is up to the only force mightier than the players or the owners: the capricious whims of the basketball gods.
Now dig into the related VIP+ subscriber report …