Fightin' Words: Is the NBA Becoming a Niche Sport?
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Spotlight Series
posted 3/25/2008 from
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Welcome to the BallHype Spotlight Series, Volume 3: Fightin' Words, a series of debates on sporting subjects vital and trivial. In this edition, Dan Shanoff of DanShanoff.com and The Sporting Blog argues that the NBA is becoming a niche sport. His opponent: Tom Ziller of NBA FanHouse and Sactown Royalty. Enjoy.
Shanoff: The once-hallowed "Big Four" (NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL) is now a "Big Three" (NFL, College Football, MLB) with the NHL, at most, a very popular niche sport -- and the NBA quickly joining them.
The only reason people think that the NBA is still one of the "Big" sports is because it USED to be a "Big" sport and thus all of the media coverage -- mainstream and blog -- is filled with people who care, even if most of America doesn't anymore. Just because Bill Simmons and Michael Wilbon care about the NBA more than any other sport doesn't mean that most sports fans do, too.
The NBA is closer to NASCAR than it is to the NFL, with a very dedicated (but very finite) audience.
Ziller: Saying the NBA is closer to NASCAR than the NFL is disingenuous, because MLB and NCAA Football are both closer to NASCAR than the NFL, too. The NFL is a megalith, and no sport in the United States approaches it in terms of the market, potential and actual.
Not to pull the race card, but doesn't the NBA have the advantage to cross demographic lines where the NHL is rather limited? We know the NBA had a ton of white fans at one point; those would seem to be the ones who went away. The league has not shut those fans off completely, as I think we're seeing with the increased ratings as the epic playoff race heats up. A compelling product will get these fans to come back, while the core demographic (blacks, younger whites) will always be there.
Is the NHL ever expanding outside the white male demo? I'm not thinking so.
While the NBA might be two tiers below the NFL and MLB in popularity (I'm not conceding position to NCAA Football at this point -- there are vast swaths of this country that are oblivious to the sport), it has the opportunity to once again rise. I think this spring will prove that.
Shanoff: Please consider that the most recent NBA Finals featured the best (and most marketable) individual player in the league (forget the fact that it also featured a multiple-time champion that "purists" seem to think play the game the "right way"), and it managed to be the least-watched NBA Finals ever. I wouldn't confuse the very loud echo chamber of the devoted (the Simmons/Wilbon Effect) to nationwide interest.
Ziller: No matter what way is the right way, there's an easy answer to this: The Spurs and Cavaliers both play the slow way. They also both play the defense-based way. As soon as the Conference Finals finished, everyone knew this'd be a bad Finals for the viewing audience. LeBron, the Spurs... who cares? It was two of the slowest-paced, defensively-skewed teams in the league. Maybe the presence of such teams (Portland looks to be the next generation) is an inherent flaw of the game, but it can hardly discount the fabulous postseason the NBA experienced on the whole.
Shanoff: Here's the thing: There is one -- ONE -- NBA Finals match up that has a prayer of national interest: Lakers-Celtics. Anything else will rate roughly what last year's Finals did, even if one of the participants is either the Lakers or Celtics. And even if it IS Lakers-Celtics, if it doesn't show substantial improvement over ratings this decade, that would confirm that the NBA is sliding into niche-dom.
The NFL and college football are the only sports that maintain week-in-week-out national attention -- sustained national attention. Even baseball seems to peak in April, with a lull until September/October. It's apples and oranges: If the NBA had one game a week (on the same day) for 16 weeks, you bet ratings would go up. Football's system is set up for national attention sustained over 4 months. NASCAR's weekly
set-up helps drive is success.
Every other sport is fighting for relevance, ranging from 3 weeks (NCAA Hoops) to 4 weekends per year (golf/tennis) to a single day (Arena Football, let's say).
The NBA has become a 3-moment-a-year sport: NBA Draft Night, NBA All-Star Weekend and the good fortune of a compelling Game 7 during
the playoffs.
Ziller: I heartily disagree the league's become a three-moment enterprise. Golden State-Dallas? Golden State-Utah? Phoenix-San Antonio? Even Phoenix-Lakers was an event! Detroit-Cleveland? The postseason is a two-month long series of huge moments. Everyone -- NBA fanatic or not -- talked about Game 5 of Cleveland-Detroit. Everyone -- NBA fanatic or not -- talked about GSW-Dallas.
If the NBA has slipped into nichedom in the past year, that is a mighty big niche.
Shanoff: GSW-DAL was a one-time thing: A novelty. And CLE-DET was, again, one moment, as good as it was. That brings you to 5 moments in a calendar year for the NBA, with 2 being spontaneous and unrepeatable. The NBA playoffs are a grind, and are only talked about by existing NBA fans, with the rare exceptional moment -- please keep in mind ESPN's role (and vested interest) in pushing/creating/manufacturing those moments. That's just the reality of sports, but it doesn't create a larger pie.
Ziller: If those huge NBA moments -- which had everyone in the world talking -- are novelties, why do they keep happening? This NBA stretch run and postseason... is this going to be a product of a series of well-timed flukes, or is it the product of an amazing (and growing) talent base, a stunning visual product on many nights, and smart league marketing via rule changes?
Shanoff: Here's the question: Economics aside, would the NBA be better off with their current "tentpole" strategy (5-6 individual nights of the year as "events" with lots of space in between them) or, like college basketball, a situation where they simply owned 3 straights weeks of the year, with very little national, non-avid fan attention paid beyond that. Again, economics muddles the argument.
Ziller: Let's not overblow the NCAAs. How many casual fans check out after two weeks, when their bracket's in the toilet? Yes, it completely owns two weeks in March (beginning on Selection Sunday). But the Final Four loses steam among the casual fan (with Nielsen ratings comparable to the worst NBA finals of all-time); if you don't have a rooting interest or there isn't the rare compelling storyline (Carmelo Anthony, for example), the Final Four isn't going to capture you like the championships for most other sports. So basically, if this theory's right, the entire basis of college basketball's popularity is based completely on the novelty of a bracket.
Regarding your question, here's the thing: The NBA went through a bad spell, with few compelling stories beyond the Lakers, the Kings, and Vince Carter. It is clearly on the rise, and has been since last season. The beauty of the so-called "tentpole" strategy: You never know which night these big moments will happen. Kobe can drop 81 on League Pass. Denver could score 168 on some random Sunday. The Rockets -- a 10th place team -- can run off 22 wins in a row. At some point, the fan base created on the backs of these moments will get hooked into watching more often; the compelling product will keep folks watching when little is at stake because, hey!, you never know when something fun will happen. This is why ratings are improving this year for the NBA: The product is getting better, and it's the strategy which has allowed this.
Is the NBA becoming a niche sport? Is it the clear #3 sport now and in the future? Should Shanoff be disbarred? Should Ziller be disrobed? Discuss below, or where ever. It's your life.
Keep track of the Spotlight Series at the BallHype hub or via the RSS feed. To get involved in future Spotlight Series, contact Tom Ziller.
Tags:
NBA
Comments (39)
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Ben Q. Rock [M]ake sure Bennett Salvatore is in the right place at the right time, and everything will be fine.
At home on his sofa, for instance.
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Atma Brother #1 it's hard to find Spurs fans outside of San Antonio
Shoot, it's hard to find a Spurs fan inside San Antonio. They couldn't even fill the stands for their home Western Conference Finals games. Think that would happen in Oakland or New York?
The San Antonio Spurs run in the 2000's might be the single worst thing that could have happened to the league this decade. Boring style of play, floppers littered up and down the roster, whiners after ever call, stale uniforms, and a tiny market that's lucky to even have an NBA franchise. I know hardcore NBA fans who refuse to watch the Spurs in the finals.
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Ben Q. Rock The Spurs are hardly the only boring team, flopping team, whining team, ugly team, and small-market team (although that's a misconception - San Antonio is one of the U.S.'s largest cities); what makes them so revlied is that they combine those elements to create an ubervillain that isn't even fun to root against. The fact that they win makes it even worse.
I feel kinda obligated to say something nice about the Spurs now, so: I respect Tim Duncan's cordiality and Gregg Popovich's passion. And -- dur -- the fact that the team wins so much. That doesn't make them worth my time, though.
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warrejt Atma Brother #1 - That is easily one of the dumbest comments I've ever read. As a resident of SA, I can say without a doubt, during the season, there are "Go Spurs Go" banners on nearly every building, at least one Spurs' flag on a car window within eye-shot, and people selling non-authentic Spurs' gear at every major intersection. SA has more pride in the Spurs than most cities.
What are you talking about: SA can't fill the stands during the Western Conference Finals. I was there - it was sold out. Do you know when the last time the Spurs didn't sell out a game? Look it up, cause it was a looooooong time ago.
The Spurs won their first title in 1999, not 2000.
I don't mind people disliking the Spurs b/c of their style or anything else, but at least get your facts straight and have some sort of informed opinion before you make yourself look like a moron. Thanks.
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dmothe30 I'm hyping this because it's well argued, but I disagree vehemently. Fighting words, indeed.-
And One Ditto.
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Odenized While Ziller argues well, Shanoff wins this round. I don't know anyone who watches the NBA on a regular basis who wouldn't be considered a 'niche' fan.
If the average Joe is watching a game in the L, it might be a hyped Lakers-Celtics game or a historic Rockets win-streak, or even the dunk contest for that matter. But your average Joe certainly is not going to take as much interest in the NBA (even the Finasl) as he does college hoops...sadly.
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Ben Q. Rock I couldn't care less that college hoops is more popular. The NBA has a superior product. If people would rather root for nameless amateurs, most of whom doomed to irrelevancy at age 22, more power to them.
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ashman It's a niche! No it's not! We have no evidence of anything!
Indignantion aside, where's the mention of considerable NBA interest outside the U.S. niche?
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TheHype Glad you brought that up ash, as I was just about to make a tiny comment on it.
Up here in the Canader (well, mind you I'm in the French section so this view is obviously an outlier) the interest is niche-like. Even with my buddies that I've balled with since babies don't pay attention to the regular season.
Shanoff's 5 Moment idea is right, as far as people here with no easy access to League Pass or the TNT channels.
But as always Ziller gets my vote -- we had a blood contract.
BIRT: this feature is awesome?
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ranter the basis of this arguement is based on perception, so it can't be quantified or proven one way or another - Shanoff does a good job of explaining his perception and Ziller does an equally good job of explaining his
I share Ziller's view, but I admit that the NBA has plenty of room to grow in relation to the other sports
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We Rite Goode Exactly--outside of Jason, no one's cited a single measure of popularity, like changes in total attendance or jersey sales. Does BH has a handle on the growth in basketball blogs? With dozens of new sports blogs a day, that figure is going to increase, regardless, but the rate of increase compared to other major sports would be illuminating.
Still, debates can be fun without statistics, which can bore/confuse the reader--as ranter suggests, the lack of proof leaves the argument open for the rest of us.
(But maybe the next Fightin' Words: "Should we use data to prove our points?")
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Jason Here's one metric from our database that may be relevant. Every sport has its own base of passionate fans and bloggers, but general sports blogs theoretically represent more mainstream tastes of their writers and readers. Of the general sports blogs that we've been tracking for the past year, here's our estimated breakdown of number of posts by sport over the past 12 months:MLB 16,806
Baseball and basketball are undoubtedly helped by longer seasons and more games ... but the big three have a sizeable lead on the rest of the pack.
NFL 14,125
NBA 10,642
NCAA Football 3,872
NHL 2,432
NCAA Basketball 1,803
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C-Ho MLB's fanbase is aging rapidly. If it weren't for fantasy baseball, the MLB would be dead in 20 years, along with all the fans who still remember the good ol' days.
By the way, the fact that nobody other than me seems to enjoy fantasy basketball might have something to do with the NBA's perceived lack of popularity.
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FanaticalPupil There are others. Join us, C-Ho.
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FreeDarko Like the NBA needs America anymore. -
ashman I'd rather not start a semantic debate, but is 'niche' even used correctly here? Basketball, baseball, soccer, and hockey are played at a variety of amateur and pro levels internationally, while football hasn't crossed the U.S. border with much success. Sounds like the nichiest of all to me.
After WRG's next data-centric Fightin' Words, I'd like to see Shanoff and Ziller debate ethnocentrism and global pasttimes. The jpg can be a world map with the prime meridian in the center.
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ygbfkm If the NBA is niche, it's a pretty big niche. Probably a bigger niche than Major League Baseball. You want numbers? NBA gear outsells MLB gear by 27%*. There were 12 million more people that watched the NBA playoffs compared to the MLB playoffs**. And NBA games average about 195 more points than MLB games***.
* = this number is completely fabricated.
** = so is this one.
*** = this proves it. The NBA is better than MLB.
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khandor Shanoff's point that the individual games are all over the weekday map is 100% accurate ... especially when it comes to playoff basketball
In the regular season, games need to be played on specific nights, e.g. Mon, Wed, Fri & Sun ... across the league ... beginning in November and regardless what the ratings are (i.e. if you built it they will come).
the post-season ... in order to develop viewer loyalty and momentum ... games need to be played every other night, exclusively ... with each Playoff Series starting on the same day as the others ... regardless what the ratings are (i.e. if you built it they will come).
The NFL has mass appeal because it has followed this simple premise for the last 50 years.
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TF Is the NBA niche? No. Is is suffering a popularity crisis in America? Yes.
I am a huge NBA fan, watch the Magic as much as I can. However, there is no denying that ratings are down. Last year's finals drew half of what the NCAA Championship featuring 2 football schools game did.
It was 1/3rd Rating of the finals 10 years earlier.
The weeknight games on TNT/ESPN are getting beaten by college games on some nights....something that wasn't heard of 10 years ago.
It all comes down to how the NBA has marketed itself. It's not the team, it's the stars. As exciting as Lebron is, in the ESPN era, having him shoved down our throats to the point where nobody gives a damn has turned people off. They hype, they hype and then hype again, yet no one hears.
Internationally though, look out, because the NBA is getting very very big.
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PostmanE Good arguments, all around. I'll add this relativistic copout: It matters where you are.
Big markets (like the one I live in, or New York, or L.A., or even Detroit) care an awful lot for their NBA franchises, and coverage of the franchises dominate any collegiate coverage any time of the year not bracketed with "Madness." And that's just hoops -- college football can't hold a candle to the NBA in these markets in terms of media coverage or fan interest, and I'd argue that college basketball outranks football in seasonal interest in big markets, too. It's the game, not the league.
Also, demographics suggest that more and more people are moving to cities and staying in them, and further gravitating to suburbs of large metropolitan cities. Maybe the NBA will win these people over and maybe these people will just bring their rural collegiate fandom with them, but these are also the places where large media remains the most viable. It's not unrealistic to assume the NBA can grow among new city residents over the long term if supported by the resources of local mass media.
Anyway, college football sucks.
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PostmanE Also, I realize I committed the sin of not providing data to back up my argument about demographics, but if anyone is curious where I pulled that from (only partially my ass) I think I read it in a recent story about the housing crisis in The Atlantic. -
TF I disagree PostmanE. LA (USC) & Detroit (Michigan) are two of the bigger major college football markets and TV ratings show that.
In today's watered down media only 3 sports are maintaining or growing on an annual basis. The NFL, NASCAR and College Football.
College Football TV ratings in the NY and Boston markets have almost doubled where they were 10 years ago. The 2006 National Championship game was the third most watch TV show of 2006 behind only the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards. The 2007 (a blowout) game finished 9th...behind the SuperBowl, Academy Awards, and 7 episodes of American Idol.
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FreeDarko Brevity is my name today: As a resident of Seattle, I wonder if David Stern is aware of all this.-
PostmanE Touche. Done speculating now.-
FreeDarko No, I'm saying that Stern SHOULD be made aware of this, because I think you're right.-
PostmanE Ah, even better. I inferred the opposite -- that Stern has heard this sort of stuff and doesn't buy it. I suppose it would explain his ambivalence toward Seattle's situation.
I don't know enough about the town and its sporting preferences to know if my guess applies, but one would assume the residents of Seattle would lean more toward the NBA than, say, college football.
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We Rite Goode Wasn't the NBDL partly created to (fairly cheaply) get the NBA into rural, underserved markets? (Which acknowledges the league's lack of cultural currency in, say, Boise).
Would work better if the NBDL was more of a traditional minor league--so half the rookies prep for a year in whatever outpost, rather than idling on an NBA bench as the 10th/11th man--thus building some connection between the sticks and the pros.
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PostmanE That's interesting. It also might be a way to attract those who prefer the college game for whatever innate reasons -- if you fostered that college game ethos at the D-League level and tied it to a pro franchise, you might be able to increase interest in the NBA in places like Iowa.
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mcwelk Guys, it's spelled Nietzsche.-
And One Stop it - I wanted to say that. -
mphoenix niche (plural niches)
- a cavity, hollow, or recess, generally within the thickness of a wall, for a statue, bust, or other erect ornament. Hence, any similar position, literal or figurative.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900) was a nineteenth-century German philologist and philosopher. He wrote critiques of religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy, and science, using a distinctive German language style and displaying a fondness for aphorism.
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RedBaron joke (noun, verb, joked, jok·ing.)
1. something said or done to provoke laughter or cause amusement, as a witticism, a short and amusing anecdote, or a prankish act: He tells very funny jokes. She played a joke on him.
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mphoenix Aware of the joke Red Baron, 100% not funny.
I'm sorry i have no sense of humor , thats why i took the time to define words in a basketball discussion board.
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SP Here's a better question: Why are football (why is it called football again?) and NASCAR so popular? Seriously, there is no way of answering this question other than to say that Americans are just plain dumb. Nowhere else in the world is football even close to have a following and NASCAR which is barely a sport to begin with is such a gross bastardization of racing that only rednecks (talk about niche) like it, and there are sadly a lot of them in this country.
My point is, sports like basketball, my favorite, hockey, and soccer (usually called football--hey whadda you know!) appeal to the common person. They are just natural games about putting a ball into a goal. If we ever discovered other civilizations, the aliens would be play some form of those games. But American football is so manufactured and tailor-made for the American people that I can't see it ever catching on anywhere else. All the rules (and there are a lot) and seemingly made up parts of the game would only appeal to Americans. I think Americans choice of football and NASCAR over more popular worldly sports says more about the American people than anything about the state of basketball.
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Morgan Wick I suspect a lot of Americans like football because it's violent, but I like it - and auto racing - because it has compelling action and story (for lack of a better word, I don't mean to imply that either is like pro wrestling). Few stretches in sports are more compelling than the late comeback drive, and car racing has a habit of making it impossible for me to turn away until the end.
Basketball, by contrast, I find hard to follow. It either moves too fast, is too boring, or paradoxically, both. (I remember one time ESPN showed a Duke/UNC game on a whole mess of channels, including a standard broadcast on ESPN and the ability to view the game exclusively from the "Above the Rim" cameras on ESPN2. I watched the game almost entirely on the latter and was able to follow it easier than the standard basketball camera.) I'd like it if the LPGA or softball or something was used as the standard-bearer for women's sports, not the WNBA which has a strike against it because it's basketball. I like hockey when the players aren't phoning it in, which at least in the immediate vicinity of the strike (and certainly before it), happened disturbingly often in the NHL: "Doo-dee-doo-dee-doo, I think I'll skate over here, doo-dee-doo-dee-doo, I think I'll tap the puck this way, doo-da-doo-da-doo, I think I'll take a shot but after it's saved it'll take several seconds for anyone to touch it, doo-da-doo-dee-do, and there's another icing call." Even after the strike, I can't bring myself up to watch hockey too often, that is to say at all, though that's partly because I watch ESPN for most of my sports news, especially Around the Horn and PTI. Soccer is too big and expansive to follow.
The real problem for basketball, hockey, and soccer is ESPN. The highlight-worthy moments for baseball are also moments that help your team win, be they home runs or great catches (which otherwise would have put men on base or even scored runs). Ditto football (see: Reception, Immaculate, and Eli-to-Tyree). But basketball's highlight-worthy moments are... dunks. You don't get three points for a dunk. (Some foreign player in the WNBA made essentially this point a while back, wondering why Americans were so into dunks.) The fact is that when the game is played well, especially on defense, it's not interesting, unlike in football or baseball. Even when you play lock-down defense, the rare exciting defensive plays (blocks, steals) are either too rare or have their excitingness taken away by the good defense of the other team. And the relative simplicity of hockey and soccer arguably works against them, since what do you show other than goals? And good saves? And hockey's equivalent to the dunk, the fight? (I used to have a habit in NHL 2001 of not having my player act at all when he got into a fight. The other player would get five minutes for fighting but I'd get two minutes for roughing and a delayed three-minute power play with no springing players out of the box after scoring a goal. They'd gotten rid of that by NHL 2004. Hockey's reliance on the fight for popularity is a BAD sign.)
And I'd say car racing is a fairly simple, "appeal to the common person" sport as well, comparable to other types of races, including track events at the Olympics. (See: the popularity of Formula One in Europe.) Besides, doesn't the fact that a complex, "smart" sport like football is more popular than simple sports like hockey say GOOD things about the American people (for once)?
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khandor SP,
Perhaps it's You who needs to be more open-minded, yourself, when it comes to developing an appreciation for the unique value of different kinds of 'sports', including 'American Football', for example.
In a sense, there's an element of patronizing superiority to your own reverence for certain sports, exclusively, like basketball (my favourite, as well), soccer and hockey, etc., at the expense of disliking certain others because of their 'rules'.
Peshaw ...
Like and appreciate all of them ... for what each brings to the banquet table of life. :-)
Links (14)
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Published 3/25/2008 by Matt Watson at Detroit Bad Boys
Is this NBA becoming a niche sport? Tom Ziller fights the good fight by arguing with Dan Shanoff.
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NBA.com 'Shatters' Traffic Records in March
Published 4/11/2008 by Will Brinson at FanHouse
... If you believe all the chatter that the NBA is not relevant or it's an entirely "niche sport", then you would probably be surprised to learn that for the second consecutive month, NBA.com broke its own record for monthly page views. Of course, that probably has nothing to do with one of the most exciting basketball seasons in recent memory; surely it's just a bunch of NBA diehards refreshing all day every day to prove that the L can compete on a level with the other major sports. ...
The NBA's popularity has definitely taken a hit this decade, and declining Finals ratings may be the easiest way to see it ... although I'd say that relatively poor Finals products have been a big part of the problem. It's unrealistic to expect another run as entertaining as MJ's six titles in the 90's, but a lot of the recent matchups have been particularly brutal. Most of the Eastern Conference teams haven't been compelling, and it's hard to find Spurs fans outside of San Antonio.
Clearly, there is a huge opportunity this spring, in what should be an epic postseason. Give us some early-round intrigue (shouldn't be hard in the West) and make sure Bennett Salvatore is in the right place at the right time, and everything will be fine.