There’s a persistent narrative across sports media that Major League Baseball is struggling while basketball thrives. The NBA, though, has seen national audiences for its signature events drop year after year. And through the first week or so of the 2024-2025 season, those trends have continued.

Per Awful Announcing, ratings for ESPN’s doubleheader on opening night were down a whopping 42 percent from the 2023 season. And that’s not all. Another ESPN matchup between the Milwaukee Bucks and Philadelphia 76ers drew just 1.71 million viewers, a 33 percent decline from Celtics-Knicks in 2023. Suns-Clippers, also on ESPN, was down nearly 50 percent from last season. 

It’s not just ESPN; TNT also has shown huge declines: Spurs-Mavericks dropped 29 percent from a comparable time slot in 2023. Even on Friday night, the main ESPN network got just 830,000 viewers for Pacers-Knicks, fewer than the Louisville-Boston College football game on ESPN2.

That’s as ugly as it gets.

NBA’s Disappointing Ratings A Sign Of More To Come?

It’s fair to point out that the NBA’s first week is competing against a World Series between two popular, big-market teams. As well as trying to pull viewers away from news coverage during a hotly contested presidential election. 

Still, those viewers managed to pull themselves away from politics long enough to watch a Louisville-Boston College game on ESPN2. But they’ve mostly tuned out the NBA.

There’s a long way to go on the basketball calendar, and plenty of marquee matchups to come. But the league has a significant problem on its hands, and a multi-faceted one. It has consistently devalued the importance of its product by having star players sit out for games at a time. When players don’t seem to care about the regular season, why should fans? 

There’s also decreasing star power; as LeBron, Kevin Durant and Steph Curry age, who is the next generation of NBA superstars to draw in viewers? And, of course, there are the league’s political hurdles. Huge numbers of potential fans have tuned out the NBA thanks to its far-left political views. From coaches, players and official messages, the NBA has made it clear that it is a sports league for the political left.

Limiting your audience to half the country is generally a poor strategy. And turns out, it’s created poor results. Stunning.