Throughout the 2024-2025 season, many people have sounded the alarm bells over the NBA TV ratings. Ratings have been going down for a while, as there’s been a fifty percent viewership decrease since the 2011-2012 season.
However, this season’s numbers are particularly worrisome. From 2023-2024, NBA TV viewership has gone down by 18 percent in 2024-2025. This leads to many important questions, like what has led to the general decline since 2012 and the particularly big drop in NBA TV viewership this season.
NBA TV viewership declines
A big reason for NBA TV viewership declining since 2011-2012 is due to the fact the NBA has become a fundamentally different sport since then. In 2012 NBA teams played much slower and were looking for shots all over the court. Meanwhile in 2025 NBA teams are working at a lightning fast pace and put the three over other shots. For many, this new NBA isn’t as entertaining due to lack of variety in offenses and that you can’t appreciate great plays as much due to how fast the teams are moving. Also, NBA players miss much more games than they did in 2012. This means you don’t always get to see your favorite players.
However, this is a general trend since 2012, and doesn’t explain the sudden decline in NBA TV views this year. However, this is likely due to another current trend in the NBA, sports and entertainment as a whole, streaming. The NBA announced that TNT would lose its NBA contract in favor of Amazon prime. This means the popular NBA on TNT show would be facing its last season. An iconic show being cancelled along with forcing fans to pay for a subscription service in Amazon prime left many fans losing interest.
Photo via Google Play
Is NBA TV viewership an issue?
Many people look at the viewership numbers and fire off the alarm bells. However, I’m not sure this is as worrisome as people may believe. The NBA’s money does not come from people watching on NBA TV. They make money from merchandise sales, in person viewership and international viewership.
Although having to stream games on another platform can be frustrating, it’s very lucrative for the leagues. Amazon Prime paid the NFL one billion dollars to get the streaming rights to Thursday night football. Although we don’t know the specifics of how much streaming services will be paying the NBA, NBC, ESPN and Amazon combined will be paying the NBA 76 billion dollars. The NBA doesn’t have to worry about declining viewership when the middleman is removed and you can make way more money from streams.
Photo via Sporting News
The trend of TV viewers declining isn’t exclusive to the NBA. TV isn’t as popular as it once was. For example, during its peak, the show “Friends” got about 25 million viewers per episode. Meanwhile, today’s hot shows like “Euphoria” only get about 16.3 million views. The NBA saw the walls caving in on TV viewership and rightfully diversified its income sources.
NBA TV ratings solutions
When you look at the numbers, it seems as though the NBA’s TV ratings aren’t a sign of bad times for the NBA. Rather it’s been a part of a long term plan by commissioner Adam Silver to make the NBA a bigger business. So, is there any reason to address a “problem” that has no impact on the NBA and its teams ability to pay their bills and make themselves rich?
One of my original worries with this idea is that streaming is a very new service, and that the future of the streaming services may be unsteady. However, the NBA isn’t going to sign a ten year deal with Amazon prime if they weren’t 100 percent sure they’d be there to stream games. The trend in streaming has been consolidation. Experts in tech believe that this trend will continue. By the time that contract is over, we could see only three to four streaming services. However, Amazon prime is backed by the biggest company on planet earth. Even if it starts to lose money Amazon can afford to keep it up.
Despite all this, the NBA should still keep an eye on those TV ratings. They can expect reasonable declines in the move to streaming, but this big of a decrease before the transition even begins is worrisome. If NBA on Amazon prime is to thrive, they will need an elite pregame show and a group of announcers in the game who mix analysis with a pure love of the game.
