Many supporters of the NBA cautioned against reading too much into the abysmal 2020 NBA Finals ratings because the season was so irregular. Now, we have the ratings for the recently concluded 2021 NBA Finals, and they are still very poor.
The 2021 NBA Finals averaged 9.91 million viewers, a 32% increase from the record low 2020 series that took place in the Orlando bubble. The 2020 season was interrupted by the pandemic, and its return in the bubble was marred by an embrace of progressive politics. The 2020-2021 season was a return to a more normal schedule, shortened by only 10 games and started in mid-December as opposed to the usual mid-October tipoff.
But, aside from last year’s awful ratings, the 2021 NBA Finals saw the lowest average viewership since 2007. This came despite several great storylines, including the emergence of Phoenix Suns star Devin Booker, two-time league MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo finally arriving on the league’s biggest stage, and future Hall of Famer Chris Paul chasing the championship that has eluded him since he arrived in the league in 2005.
The schedule is not an excuse for this year’s ratings. The only notable change was the season’s start date, and that provided a ratings boost, given that it opened during the week of Christmas.
Is star power to blame? The playoffs saw Stephen Curry eliminated in the play-in round, LeBron James eliminated in the first round, and Kawhi Leonard injured in the second round. But the second round of the playoffs saw stars of old (Paul, Kevin Durant, and Paul George) and new (Antetokounmpo, Booker, and Trae Young) yet still saw worse ratings than the 2019 Conference semifinals.
It is impossible to say definitively that this decline is driven by politics, but other explanations seem lacking. We know that politics has led to ratings drops before. We know that the most precipitous drop in the NBA’s ratings during its prolonged decline came at the start of the 2019-2020 season, when the league’s political hypocrisy with regard to China was put on full display. This is consistent across sports leagues: the NFL has seen ratings decline during its most political seasons, in 2016, 2017, and 2020.
Polls have consistently shown that people, particularly Republicans and conservatives, were less likely to watch sports leagues that injected so-called “social justice” politics into their products. Those polls continued into this year, as a Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that over 34% of people have watched sports less due to politics, compared to 11% saying they had watched more.
More likely than not, the NBA has bled regular and casual viewers thanks to its progressive political turn. Whether the league can entice them back by taking a more apolitical turn is anyone’s guess. But given the league’s decadelong ratings decline, it would surely be worth a try.
