Earlier this week, David shared this tweet in the MMB Slack about the NBA’s declining TV viewership and what the possible causes were:

And it got me thinking about what the issues could be.

There are several possible reasons as the commenters on Twitter (or X) list out repeatedly. Poor refereeing, Flopping & foul baiting, Injuries, League-wide parity, the decline of the Old Guard and so on & so forth. All valid reasons. I could probably write a small thesis on Tony Brothers and his officiating incompetence, but I think Matthew might be the best person to do that. To me though, I think it’s because it’s so frustratingly complicated to watch a game in America.

Small note: I’m from India. I don’t usually experience the chaos that is the NBA’s American Broadcast paradigm. I use League Pass International and that takes care of everything – more or less.

Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on how you look at it) I got the chance to travel to America as part of an extended vacation, where, over a month I got a full blast of the convoluted mess that is the NBA’s Broadcast ecosystem.

To be honest, I’m surprised that the ratings and viewership are still where they are with how confusing everything is. I get that the NBA is trying to cater to all their broadcast partners’ needs and keep everyone happy, but there must be a much simpler solution. It’s clear now that the NBA hasn’t dealt with cord-cutting and the decline of Cable Broadcasts very well. That probably ties into its biggest broadcast partner ESPN/ABC, which itself has been stuck in a quagmire as it figures out its future direction. It treats streaming as a side project meant to cater to a niche market rather than the primary means of watching a game as it is for most fans in this day & age.

In a lot of ways, this has always been the case with the NBA and streaming. A small flashback to provide context. Way back in 2013, I moved to America to pursue my Graduate studies in New York. It was an amazing opportunity from an educational standpoint, but also, to me, it was going to be so cool because watching the NBA was going to become much easier. As someone from India, I’d long since become accustomed to the fact that Basketball is the 4th or 5th most popular sport in the country (The country’s sporting mindset revolves around Cricket – Nothing else matters really). For most of my years of following the sport, I had to watch whichever game the NBA’s Indian broadcast partner decided to show at 6 in the morning. As a Mavs fan, this didn’t give me many options to watch games. It’d always be the most ‘Popular’ teams – Lakers, Celtics and the like. I relied heavily on bootleg streams to watch games.

So, moving to America had me excited. I could stream games on League Pass and watch everything! I didn’t care about Netflix or Hulu or any one of those things too much. My main streaming priority was Sports. I didn’t mind paying for licensed services. Imagine my disappointment when I learned that League Pass could be accessed as a Subscription ONLY if I had a cable subscription too. That’s one of the 1st details that it asked you to fill out when you went to subscribe to the damn thing. Even after a few long & frustrating calls with a League Pass Customer exec later and still nothing could be done. This was the way. The only means of doing so. Back to bootleg streams for me. (Saved some money, to be honest, but that’s a different discussion altogether)

I moved back home in 2015, and the streaming situation continued as it was before. It wasn’t until 2019 or so when the NBA started making a concerted push to make League Pass more accessible as a service Internationally. It made a lot of sense and wasn’t priced exorbitantly, so I jumped at it and haven’t looked back. It’s made my life so much easier. No worrying about streams dropping or buffering or having to reload or look for alternate streams etc. I wake up early on Game Day, switch on the NBA App on my TV (via the Fire TV stick) and watch whichever game I feel like. It’s almost….. Utopian.

Some more information – League Pass Premium in India costs about 2100 Indian Rupees (The equivalent of $25) and we get access to every game from every team, regardless of local or National Broadcast. On TNT/ESPN games, we have the option of watching their halftime show or sticking to the In-Arena feed. We don’t get the All-Star weekend stuff or the Draft, but we do get the complete playoffs. In addition to this, we get most NBATV content (There’s not much, but I’ll take what I can get). I get to stream on up to 5 devices. This is a sweet deal considering that you’re talking about 1230 regular season games and all the Playoffs & Finals etc. The NFL equivalent (NFL+ is what I think it’s called) is the equivalent of $250 – An exorbitant sum (from an Indian standpoint) for the number of games that they play. F1TV is comparable to League Pass at 2500 Rupees ($30 basically), but that’s only 25 race weekends plus whatever bonus content they create.

League Pass in India is a damn good deal. It’s value for money and so convenient. So, heading into my US trip this year, I thought that I wouldn’t have any issues while I was visiting. If League Pass is this simple in India, then it should be the same in America, right? I had the subscription bit sorted and thought I wouldn’t miss any games while I was travelling. Win-Win.

It was such a shock to experience that the reality wasn’t even close to what I was thinking. I was in DC when the Mavs were playing their opening night game against the Spurs. When I tried to watch the game after getting back to my Airbnb in the evening, I learned that since it was a national TV broadcast on TNT, I couldn’t stream the game through League Pass. I’d have to watch it on the TNT App or wait 3hrs and watch the replay. What?!

A similar thing happened when I was in New York. I was trying to watch a Celtics game as I had some time to kill before turning in for the day but got a similar message as the TNT broadcast because the game was being broadcast on local networks. Again, What?! How is this an actual strategy to make the game accessible to fans? How do you create all these hoops that people have to navigate to watch a game?

The same story replayed during the Dallas leg of my trip. I tried watching the Mavs game against the Bulls, only to be prevented from watching it live because it was a local broadcast. Forest the following game against the Suns, I was lucky to go to the AAC and watch it in person – An experience I’m going to hold on to for the rest of my life, despite the loss, but that was probably the only way I was going to watch the game while in Dallas without a bootleg stream.

So as a paying League Pass customer in America, I can’t watch National TV broadcasts because those companies want you to watch the game on their Apps or via Cable (or YouTube TV or its equivalent I assume) AND I can’t watch local broadcasts because those companies want you to watch via Cable. The cherry on top of all of this, as I learned from speaking to my fellow MMBers, is that League Pass costs around $150 in America – A big difference from what I pay as an International customer from India. All things considered though, that’s not a deal breaker. If they increased the price in India, I’d still go for it. I love the sport, and I don’t mind paying for a decent product. How does this make sense?

The NBA must understand that most people these days – not just Gen Z, but Millennials and Gen X too – probably don’t have a Cable connection at home. They’ve cut the cord and moved completely to Streaming their content. My father, who’s 65 years old, gave up his Cable subscription in India and now only consumes his content via Streaming.

We don’t also necessarily watch this stuff on our TVs. A lot of the time, it’s on our phones or tablets. I watch the games on my iPad sometimes while I’m making breakfast before I head out to work. There needs to be a simpler, more convenient means of making everything accessible. If it’s priced within reason, I’m sure that people will be willing to pay for it. I shouldn’t have to subscribe to 5 different Apps, just because there are 5 different broadcast partners with their agendas. How is this going to work with Amazon coming on board from the 25-26 season? Am I going to have to watch games on the Amazon Prime App? Considering most Live content on these Apps is Geoblocked, how does that affect international fans?

Adam Silver’s legacy might be the successful financial growth of the league to the extent that they’re signing 11yr-$76 billion broadcast deals with major networks, but it’s also that of perennial mismanagement of the product, both on the court and off it.

Fixing the On-Court product isn’t hard. The NBA had taken steps towards this last season with their mid-season Officiating directive, which made for a compelling 2nd half of the season, only for them to revert to the usual officiating from seasons past. They need to go back to allowing a bit more physicality so that it doesn’t feel like an Offensive track meet every time. Again, different discussion.

More importantly, though, the NBA needs to work to rectify its abysmal Broadcast setup for its American fans. While us International folk matter, the core demographic of the viewership is still American or based in America. Watching or streaming an NBA game needs to be made simpler in its backyard.

Do that and the NBA won’t have to rely on gimmicks like the In-Season Tournament/NBA Cup or potentially streaming games on TikTok to maintain viewership. It’ll work itself out. It might not reflect in the ‘ratings’ which is a nebulous and vague formula that no one can seem to understand, but it will increase the viewership. More importantly, it’ll improve the presentation of the product at least – Something the NBA sorely needs.