The NBA has a ratings problem and Mike Francesa is convinced commissioner Adam Silver has no clue what it is.
Silver addressed the league’s ratings dip this week while speaking to reporters ahead of the NBA Cup championship game. Reluctant to blame the product, Silver instead pointed to the trend of declining cable viewership. But according to Francesa, Silver seems to be missing the real issues.
“The NBA’s acknowledgement that the TV ratings were disappointing for the in-season competition, blaming it on the demise of cable rather than blaming it on the product,” Francesa recently said on his podcast. “Hey, the NBA has a problem with their regular season. They have a problem with the value and what anybody, including their fans, perceive now as the value of the regular season.
“Blame that on rest management. Blame that on the players and teams cavalier approach to just rest players at whim. So if you don’t care enough about the game to play your players in it when they’re healthy, why should the fans care about the games? Then you put together this completely useless, completely insulting competition and try to build it into something and then the fans don’t respond…it’s because you tried to give them garbage and tried to make it meaningful. It’s not meaningful. It’s garbage.”
But it isn’t just load management and devalued regular season games, Francesa went on to join Bob Costas, Bomani Jones, Shaquille O’Neal and others in calling out the league’s obsession with three-pointers.
“It all can’t be about the fact that you just want to get the three and that the two is a bad option,” Francesa ranted. “The amount of threes is destroying the quality of the NBA game. And the NBA has to understand it is a huge problem…it is infecting the integrity of their game.”
Silver is right, cord-cutting is a lead factor in why ratings are down. The NFL might not be showing any scars from cord-cutters, but the NBA, college basketball and the NHL are certainly feeling its effects. Declining cable subscribers has been blamed for years and it continues to be an issue, which is part of why the NBA prioritized streaming when negotiating its next rights agreement. But the issues Francesa laid out are contributing factors as well.
About Brandon Contes
Brandon Contes is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. He previously helped carve the sports vertical for Mediaite and spent more than three years with Barrett Sports Media. Send tips/comments/complaints to bcontes@thecomeback.com