The NBA has been around for a long time already.
It’s a fun sport to watch; there are big names like Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and Stephen Curry, but over the years, its popularity has gone down, and the game becomes softer with every passing day. Many fans complain nowadays and say that the NBA has changed ever since Kobe Bryant tragically passed away and LeBron came into the NBA.
Watching the NBA back then was very aggressive, very competitive, and very entertaining. These days, all you see is players crying out to get a foul and get ejected from the game for doing a simple celebration when they score a point.
The ratings drop includes cord-cutting, a changing media landscape, and debates over the game’s style, player health, and a perceived reliance on a few stars. However, the league has seen record attendance in recent years and continues to grow internationally.
The NBA started to decline in 2009, all the way to 2019. The rates have been going up and down, but they have mostly decreased to the point where fans are not even excited to watch the sport they love anymore.
Fans have seen how bad and soft the game of Basketball has been lately, and there have been many comments on how they don’t enjoy watching it and feel sad because they want to see the aggressive and exciting basketball back when MJ was playing with Larry Bird and Tim Dunkini, and especially Shaq.
Shaq was a player that everyone was excited to watch. He was a true basketball player who lived up to his name, which we don’t see nowadays. Shaq was the definition of a real center.
The NBA now has a lower cable rating, which means not a lot of people are watching it anymore. Only a few channels now stream NBA games; the main channels that stream it live are ESPN, and even they are not getting many viewers on their channels.
The NBA AND TNT deal is shutting down.
The NBA also signed a deal with Amazon, ESPN, and NBC for the 2025-2026 season, which does not include TNT anymore, which was used to stream old NBA games. This new, multi-year agreement concludes the NBA’s 36-year partnership with TNT. While the live game broadcasts on TNT are over, the popular “Inside the NBA” studio show will move to ESPN and ABC.
In 2024, the NBA had very high viewership. They were doing great, but over the years, it has been going down because they are not partnered with some streaming channels they were with back then, and because they changed streaming channels, not a lot of people watch them anymore.
Another reason why the NBA is losing viewership is because of their new players and their playing styles. The playing styles from the 90s have changed so much from the playing styles today. It’s very different; it’s no longer easy to dribble and shoot.
Now we have a whole ton of crazy moves and shots.