Is the NBA Product More or Less Valuable Than We Think? | The Bill Simmons Podcast
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- Опубліковано 8 чер 2024
- The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Ethan Sherwood Strauss to talk about the value of the NBA.
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‘Is the nba overrated, underrated, or properly rated? Hear me out House, I think the nba is so overrated that it might be a little underrated right now.’
new bill simmons ranking, Ranking NBA rankings loll
"Alright, we're gonna do a NBA media rights deal draft, Russillo, you have the first pick."
@@brennan_ People forget Jayson Tatum is only 26 years old, and it’s a young 26 too.
The NBA has no one believes in us energy
This is maybe the most Bill Simmonsy thing ever said by anyone. Including Bill Simmons.
I'm from Croatia, 31 years old. Gone are the days of staying up late and watching the Finals till 6 in the morning. For the last 7-8 years, it's been highlights and podcasts while I do chores 😅
Yep. Thanks for this comment and is the point that people need to realize and understand in proper perspective.
Same reason why you have these networks suffering and the product being worse while making more money. Everyone can put highlights on social media and the need for shows to catch highlights and even live games in not needed
This just means you're growing up.
I generally hear people say that they only watch a few highlights here and there in the regular season and pay more attention come playoff time
Yeah honestly I think there's a fair amount of people that don't even watch games so much is just kind of follow the drama because they're celebrities. If you go to the NBA subreddit for instance, there are plenty of highlights, but even more popular is any kind of drama.
@@michaelcorcoran8768In that case, when LeBron, Steph and KD retire, some people will tune out much like some people did when MJ retired (no offense to anyone else, but if we are talking about headlines, the big names clearly mean something here).
Yep. I'll be honest, as an NBA fan I didn't care much about the 1st round. A lot of my coworkers don't watch the NBA and maybe watch occassionally.
I wish there was a good name for this phenomena because I think it's widespread to follow players, talk about trades and possible trades, get into the drama, watch highlights, look up a game after the face when someone goes for 50 or when Draymond chokes a guy. Maybe even go see a game live or watch it on a huge screen with other fans, all long before actually ever sitting through a full game on TV with all the stoppages. It's like F1 racing. Netflix will pay to make multiple seasons of a reality show about all the drama in the sport but will never pay to broadcast an actual 2 hour long race.
Nba doesent move the needle like before 2019
Cant comment in America but in Australia it’s ridiculously popular and always growing. Internationally is insane
Means nothing
@JM I know it’s hard but TRY not to say stupid shit. Being worldwide only adds to the value. Simple economics which you obviously don’t understand 🤡
@am3818 spread worldwide, but the viewership is at historic lows..... go figure
@@shane1899only in America if you look at total numbers they are not at a historic low
@@javi3947 stop making excuses
This is such a good discussion. Simmons has been on an absolute heater this week.
I haven't watched a full NBA game since 2015 because the games nowadays are too boring to watch.
Reasons why I don't watch NBA anymore:
- Too many 3's
- Too many high pick n rolls
- The game is too soft
- No defence whatsoever
- The players are travelling a lot
- The coaches don't have any influence anymore
- No more set plays
- Too many load management
- No real rivalries
@@lilpenny1982 You will like the Timberwolves. Watch the first half of Nuggets v Wolves game 2
Simmons has been on a 2018 Bron run this past week😂😂
@@lilpenny1982mostly opinion. Caitlyn Clark captivated the country shooting three pointers. I’d say your desires are aged out
@@lilpenny1982 For me it's traveling, carrying, moving screens. But I like highlights and listen to pods.
The NBA is the only US major sports organization that is big here in Asia. It's crazy popular here.
Where in Asia? Because I live in Japan and spend a decent amount of time in S. Korea and MLB is big. Almost no one cares about NBA. Only when a native son makes it, and even then its more a fleeting interest because Hachimura and Watanabe are just roleplayers on meh teams.
@@Kagemusha08China
Yao ming
Philippines (120 million+ population) is crazy for the NBA.
The only overseas place that matters is Canada 🇨🇦
I've been watching NBA on MAX and I dig it
we once had Lakers/Celtics Finals on tape delay broadcasts. League is doing good.
Yeah I bet people would watch more games if it were readily available on a streaming site a lot of people have (Max, Amazon, etc). Otherwise most (myself included) will just keep pirating
I didnt even know Mark Normand followed basketball! Great Guest!
Comedy!
@@Flike245basketball!
Sports!
Huh? you mean Kevin Hart
This will be arguably an even more interesting question to ask in five years I think.
It's going to be bananas in 3🔥
@@Raider2PacPoint of clarification:
A lot of media coverage has surrounded the careers of LeBron James, and to a degree Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant.
I don’t know how many more years as productive players they have, and by 2028, the media will have to focus on the next generation regardless of whether they want to or not.
And the issue of who the face of the league really is comes into play
@@fortynights1513 Yeah, the NBA has long had the issue that the broader public follows players and not teams. And the league has largely cultivated that for a long time marketing the top 3-6 players and riding those coattails, especially the past 45 years. Problem now is I don't know what's coming down the pike. I mean after 98 you could see the Lakers and Spurs and those guys drafted in the mid 90s coming along though overall ratings did drop the competitiveness kept it alive, and then the huge boost with the 03-08 drafts. But now it is a big question. I don't see major athletes trying to play until they're 40 anymore once we get past this current crop; there's just no reason for it given the money they can make doing other stuff. And this new generation of kids under like 25 now just doesn't really care about sports. They're also a very small generation. The average American is now in their 40s and it's getting older, and there's no way to connect with a 21 year old athlete.
@@Raider2Pacwait until 4 years from now sheesh
I listened to the BS pod 1 years ago. He was basically talking about the same thing: how’s the nba doing? How’s the ratings? How’s the media rights deals?
46:42 I love that his two examples were an airport or hospital and not, I dunno, a bar or restaurant.
Perception is reality with advertising I suppose.
I haven’t watched a lot of NBA this year until the playoffs and definitely noticed the physicality and instantly LOVED it. It’s so much more competitive and entertaining. The intensity is so high, and not just because its playoffs. I didn’t know until now that they changed up the rules and implemented “prison ball” lol
Too little too late… They lost 80% of their audience
Excellent guest and topics!!!
The NBA Playoffs used to smother the NHL Playoffs to the smaller NBC cable channels. Now even Turner mixes NHL and NBA Playoffs. That isn't because Hockey got more popular. I have no idea how the NBA is getting more money. The best you can say about the NBA is that it isn't dying like Men's College Basketball.
The way to save TNT is to let the NBA double sell the rights…
Let the TNT crew ‘Manningcast’ the playoffs/Thursdays.
Let them keep Tuesdays on cable.
No.. the way to save TNT is to give ESPN’s package to NBC and let TNT keep their coverage. The odd man out is ESPN. With their standard visuals and regular season presentation during the playoffs. It’s insane to bring in NBC and remove TNT, when ESPN is the problem.
TV partners are overspending for the NBA when the ratings are extremely low
It’s crazy stats because I don’t watch NFL at all, so I’m in an NBA bubble and not realizing all this lol. NBA podcast clips still go the hardest online. Tops in free agency too
Same, i have given up football and baseball completely...
Better question. Is Davis Bertrans doing well?
Football has a built in scarcity just based on the nature of the game. I do think as the NFL adds game after game to their schedule, it has diluted the product to me. Late in the NFL season I start to get nauseated by the league.
By week 13 there seems to be so many players injured that it severely affects a good handful of teams and therefore affects the season in a negative way, a lot of ‘ifs and buts’ conversation tends to happen by the time the playoffs roll around
This year has been a decent product. They definitely need expansion teams. They also need to stop stars from moving around constantly.
Great show!
iwould like to see a baseball like schedule, were we see a best of 3 series all season long
International fans have grown, but I have seen many of my age group (usa) not watch as much nba than they did 10 yrs ago.
I personally was surprised at that 7 billion number. Its way more valued than I expected
I submit that the changing of the guard will bolster the NBA ... Add to that the success of the 'Nova Knicks - with three guys with championship college pedigree playing together for three years, I believe - coupled with a evolving NIL that hopefully will let college players stay longer and mature, and the increasing international influence bodes well for the Association
It's called an echo chamber, Bill.
Go to espn and look up the box score to Detroit vs the wizards and it will say 97-100% attendance, there is absolutely no way 15k+ turned up and paid to watch them play and this is the same for every game it’s almost always a sellout crowd no matter what. This on top of saying more people watched the play in tournament game then the finals last year was just ridiculously stupid.
Yea I think maybe those stats are based on percentage of tickets sold or something? So season ticket holders just aren’t turning up but it counts in the attendance
Wholesome players who are positive influences like Brunson and the Nova 3 help the NBA project good publicity which benefits the league. NOVA3 including Brunson and his two fellow Knicks are great for theNBA😊
Fantastic
If trends continue, I would like to see discussion what happens when NBA revenue stops increasing or even reverses. Because viewership isn't doing very well and it's a clear trend now and the NBA is being saved by factors they do not control and will likely not be there in another 5-10 years.
That’s not going to happen. Viewership is doing just fine.
International nba is super popular
They've apparently stopped being woke morons, so they should be fine. 2020 was painful lol
NBA is nothing like it used to be. Bill and Ryen are big Celtics fans, which is a great franchise that has good teams year in, year out. Most sports fans are tired of the NBA act
Yeah but people are watching it and streaming is taking a huge portion from television so the numbers look weird but the value is up. Sorry your feelings don’t dictate an argument against that.
@@Juice-ig3jzlol what a pathetic reply. You must be a liberal. I can just tell.
If Minnesota and OKC play next round it will be a real statement from the league, do we want to promote MNs physical defense or reward OKCs fouldbaiting ?
ranking NBA rankings do it bill
Block/charge calls should go to the FIBA model of the possession arrow
Wow the arnovitz model would be so exciting
I’m an nba fan and you are my primary source for talking basketball. Crazy thought. Small nba deal to the ringer. Peyton manning watch live format? Hbo. No censor…. Just saying what I like to see. Garnett should be there to….
This is bill at his best
It’s not a BS pod without a Daryl Morey reference.
Dofusports has never done me wrong.
Commissioner Nosferatu.
1:30 "I wrote in 2022 a story about the NBA called, 'Half the audience, twice the profit".
I don't know how valuable anyone thinks the NBA is, but it would surely be worth more if it had retained more of its audience. So the interesting question is why has it not.
In my case I haven't watched any actual games in years, and that's because I think the product is trash which isn't worth paying for or enduring the announcers, etc. for, but I certainly wouldn't say that that is more than just me.
Media has a great opportunity right now to start promoting the young guys for the future health of the league
What software do you use for this background and split screen? Looking to start a podcast
waiting for a subscriber network/channel that shows the last five minutes of each game; then i'm on board with watching basketball.
But until then ill just watch Bill Simmons talk about basketball.
I kind of agree. The highlights are usually just every made basket and a block or a steal here or there with generally equal highlights from each quarter. What would be better is a couple of key plays from the 1st and 2nd quarter, equal amounts of highlights from the 3rd if the lead is less than 20, and then going more and more real-time towards the end of the game. Other than the TV timeouts and reviews, nobody needs to watch all that. If regular season highlights are 10-15 minutes spend less than 5 on the first 3 quarters.
One big thing the NBA is missing out on his fantasy sports because no one wants to draft fantasy NBA in October if they started their season at Christmas when Fantasy Football is winding down, everyone would be all in
Ethan str8 outta HoopSpeak!
As a lifelong hoop fan I’m really loving this year - the Celtics 💯I love the officiating finally letting these boys play🔥🔥🔥💪🏿💪🏿💪🏿
Ask Ethan how to install a bidet in your apartment bathroom.
The NBA is at its best.
There's levels to this
Lotta ins, lotta outs
65 games: Four 4-team divisions per conference. Play everyone in your division 3x and play everyone else 2x. Or 77 games playing everyone in your conference 3x. But I like the shorter season with more impactful games. Or actually, better yet: Two 8-team divisions per conference. Play everyone in your division 3x, and everyone else 2x, which would lead to a nice 69 game schedule
NBA should definitely drop down to 72 games. It would make every regular season game more meaningful and would also mean less travel, fewer back-to-back games for the players, and fewer injuries. Just a win-win-win all around. I'd go all the way down to 70 games, in fact.
The mavs thunder game was back to the soft nba whistle. Especially in the 2nd quarter.
let me get this straight, our economy sucks and the cap is going up 7 percent each year? Families in the middle class will be priced out.
The economy is fine
@@CD-gk9ixconsumer debt is at its highest relative to GDP. Recession will occur, we just have to figure out whether it will be a “great” one.
@@Jorge-lh6px consumer debt is a personal problem
The mortgage issues from 2008-09 have been fixed
To be fair, the state of the economy is a personal thing
Ask 10 guys in the same town or relative area, and you may get 10 different answers
@@CD-gk9ix Oh of course, I’m just going by the figures. These sorts of things tend to correlate, which makes people feel pessimistic about the economy. Just two years ago we were in a boom market due to coming out of COVID, but a lot of that over spending from firms, individuals, and the government seems to have caught up.
@@CD-gk9ix "The mortgage issues from 2008-09 have been fixed." Jesus dude - what have you been using? They got bailed out, the banks/Wall St never learned their lesson and they're literally doing the exact same thing as in 09-09 except the bigger bubble is in commercial real estate this time. I live in the South East and we're doing better than lots of the US (especially NE) and even I can see this obvious bubble with houses on my street up double 100-150k from last year.
I rarely watch games. I keep up with them through Draftkings mainly and then I'll watch highlights on UA-cam
QQ: Why would advertisers ever accept fewer games and ad units? Increasingly frequent blowouts and lack of effort even in key playoff games are the real reason no one cares about the NBA anymore beyond game 6 or 7 of a playoff series.
Reduce the number of regular season games so they mean more( 2 x v every team) and get rid of the insane amount of ad breaks so the games are quicker. Simple.
I fell like this deal is less about traditional TV and more about where we are going. Streaming is the way forward especially for the NBA when most of its popularity is overseas, or in the online discourse. Traditional TV ratings mean less and less in 2024 and beyond, capturing the NBA on their streaming service is a means to grow each bidders user base as much as anything else.
The NFL and NCAAF value is an interesting one also, as popular as they are they only play once a week and the seasons are short when its over it's not really talked about, the NBA seems to have captured the modern 24hour news cycle better than any other American sport. That's a big part of the value play in these rights for bidders.
So question: Which league improved more with recent rules changes? Baseball (pitch clock and more Stolen Bases) or NBA reverting to the 1990's rules (that were rejected by fans and players once already)?
It’s not quite the 90’s rules. They have to bring back the hand check and illegal defense and a full 24 second shot clock after an offensive rebound, and enforce the moving screen and call traveling and carrying. That’s a lot.
Baseball and basketball are best positioned because they already have a global footprint. The NFL can push all they want, but American football is a long way from being established. Track and Field is the one to watch, mainly because the events lend themselves well to wagering and are really short, which is compatible with current attention spans.
Track and field? Pickleball is more likely to catch on than that
The NFL sells out all their international games very quickly. There were over a million people attempting to buy tickets to their regular season game in Germany. It may not be as popular internationally as basketball, but it's still plenty popular in Europe at least.
Instead of in season tourey, open the season with a round robin tourney, followed by 60 games, then play in ect...
If they go into this offseason advertising all 30 teams and creating a storyline for each team for fans to follow. All 32 NFL have a story to follow from the lead up to the draft until the end of the regular season.
@@poorchrisimagine being pretentious over sports? These are games that even children can understand, nothing complicated about them. You’re the brainlet for thinking otherwise.
I hope the new generation of players will be more hummble and respect the giants that created the league. It can't happen that an active player says he doesn't watch the games.
Seeing those numbers for the possible television deals, it doesn't matter what we think when it comes to value - the execs with Disney, Amazon, NBC vs. WBD clearly think it is. And considering basketball isn't a niche sport & is truly global where you have stars coming from everywhere in the world to play at a high level (so the cupboard will never be empty with talent) this money train, regardless of what we think, will keep running.
People love basketball. Ratings show it for NCAA women’s and men’s vs NBA
I really hope that one of these guys will read this comment because it's sad to see regular people who don't know anything about economics or money really struggling to make sense of this topic. If you don't understand the primary cause of these numbers then you will start saying things like "well these networks have less subscribers, less users, less views on nba, and because of that they are willing to pay even more now for nba". This make no sense and of course is false. The unit that these things are denominated in(the dollar) is being heavily devalued through expansion of the money supply and it started to get much worse after '08 and then worse again from 2020. Looking at numbers in nominal terms does not give you an accurate picture of the value of things whatsoever. You need to factor in the devaluation of the denominator things are priced in(the dollar) to come up with real value numbers and data. Scarce assets, like the nba, need to be measured against the dollar supply expansion. Just for instance, if an nba salary(lets say top end) were to go from 30 million to 60 million over past 5 years then in real terms that salary has stayed relatively flat(even) in actual real value. If it were to have gone from 40 million to 60 million over past 5 years then that salary actually went down in real value even though it went up a lot nominally...The answer to all this is the debasement of the denominating currency and it is the reason that people who don't understand this are not able to really make any sense whatsoever on this.
People are still basing everything off TV ratings which shouldn’t be the case. Everything will go to streaming soon and that’s the metric everyone should look at. I’m pretty sure whichever companies are negotiating for these rights are looking at future growth for their streaming services
I like the 82-game schedule because that's the way it's always been. But it's become laborious with guys sitting out, etc. I thought the in-season tournament was a joke and an attempt to make the NBA into European soccer whereby teams compete for 36 trophies. Then again I'm not the target demographic. 82 has become too much, but 44 is way too few. As Bill mentioned somewhere in that 70-75 range seems right, but you've got to make sure you see everyone come into town at last once.
The easiest way to shorten the season but keep the same amount of games is to split the season in half. During the split have a full in season tournament. Every team. Have a group stage.. then the 8 teams that win the group stage have an 8 team single elimination tournament like a mini march madness. Or just include every team and Make it just like the ncaa tournament.. call it the “commissioners cup” after the commissioners cup tournament ends.. you start back up for part 2 of the season then the same playoffs and nba championship. Subtract the amount of games the tournament takes from the regular season. This way you shorten the season, add an exciting tournament, cancel the all star game. This fixes the nba.
Ratings are down, but NBA TV rights are worth more than ever?!? Square that circle…
They need more tournaments. I don’t really watch the regular season. I spend more time listening to pods and watching videos about NBA than actually watching NBA.
Overall, i think it has been way worse than it is right now. The young talent in the league right now helps a lot. I like the changes they made to reffing it. It feels like they are tweaking things constantly, which can be annoying, but sports has always been one of my main passions, specifically football and basketball. I rarely find myself disagreeing with bill but mike trout was a bad example as someone who rarely watches mlb trout is one of like 5 players almost everyone knows..
That’s a lot of words to say it’s failing.
Surely you just play each team twice, once home, once away. That’s 62 games, would be great.
They’ll never do this. More games = more revenue. If we shave 20% off the season, will players take a 20% paycut too? I doubt that.
@@torrey88did you listen to the podcast?
Does the regular season matter?
It's sports dude. None if it matters. It's entertainment, like a movie.
NBA schedule solution:
You play each team in your division 4 times for a total of 16 division games. You then play every other team twice for a total of 50 games.
66 game season. It would all but eliminate back-to-backs and generally give more days between games for rest and travel. Fewer games and more rest days means there’s no reason to “load manage” star players. If these guys are struggling to hit 65 games in the current format then it shouldn’t be too much to ask that they play 60 in the new one.
I'm glad the all star game embarrassment lit a fire under adam silver dude been letting the league turn to dog water since he came in.Unfortunately it took HIM feeling embarrassed to give us fans what we wanted which was giving some greenlight to defense
Yea it took 15 years for him to realize. The league is a joke.
They changed the All Star Game back to the old format rather than keeping the Kobe 4th quarter. At least they quit doing the All Star Draft. That was garbage. At least they went back to East vs West
Hi bill 👋
A million dollars a year in 1979 was a lot. A million dollars is still a lot of money to normal people Bill
A lot of international viewers can’t watch because of timezones/limited selection of games broadcasted too
If most players don’t care about the regular season, why should I?
Alot of what you guys discussed is the reason piracy is coming back, people are getting sick everything getting stuck behind an app subscription.
I enjoy NBA media more than watching the games. Half the time when I tune into a game it’s a 20 or 30 point lead because one team is making three-pointers and the other is not. It sucks. Occasionally there’s a good game, but I grew up in the 90s and those games were a bloodbath. Very tight low scoring Maybe just hitting 100 points it’s not fun to watch teams score 130 in the regular season.
The playoffs are a little better, but they just aren’t good games half the time. I’d rather hear Charles Barkley talk about it with Shaq then watch modern NBA
i would be shocked if nba tv is moved into the same studios of the mlb network and nhl network
Even with Caitlin Clark, I don't think that's gonna automatically make the wnba blow up. Even if She's got the potential to be a jordan type figure for the wnba, a big part of why Jordan's celebrity translated to the pros is because people wanted to see how he would look going against magic and bird and doctor j etc. The Caitlin Clark interest of the world is gonna be harder to translate to a league where her competition doesn't contain anyone that the world at large gives a damn about.
I know very few people who still regularly watch Nba anymore
Im not watching anymore but enjoy keeping up with what is going on in the league. 82 games are too many. Playoff series are too long especially the early rounds. Not living in USA the only way to watch the few games I have time for costs way to much for me to justify. Also hard to get behind a team. I started supporting okc and it felt like within 5-6 years the whole roster had been completely gutted.
Keep doubling the price as the ratings get cut in half. What could possibly go wrong?
the WNBA is an interesting angle - its not a total zero throw in. there is real growth potential there. i cant remember ever seeing this much hype around the league
I used to watch so much nba. I haven't seen a game since the raptors won the title.
viewership is the only measure of health. all other stuff aligns with it in time.
NBA viewership is down. Contracts for TV are going up. But TVs that use to run it are struggling, thus new TVs take over.
I think it can only end 1 way. Look at Disney movies - they kept losing viewership and kept saying its ok - then last year the lost over billion on movies alone.
Adding two teams is only going to dilute the league’s talent even more.
I don't know if I'll ever return to watching the NBA because of the salaries. It's how I am feeling about a lot of the pro sports. Guys who are bottom 25% are making $10M a year? Not to mention the stars are making $200M+.
I can assure you, the old rules are still in play when OKC is on the court. It was fucking disgusting. I actually want to see The Wolves vs OKC to see how that plays out.
To me having these ambiguous rule set really just allows refs far too much power. If the Wolves are going to get a foul every time an OKC player runs into them or every time Shai fakes a shot into a defenders arm they are going to be hard to beat.
they currently have a team people will buy a ticket to just see play defense. gotta be some value in that. NFL dominates the large middle country of North America, but only basketball competes with soccer on the other fully wired in 4kHD continents.
Bill doing everything he can to avoid being called geriatric
I enjoy Ethan but I cannot fathom how he can’t buy a mic filter to stop the popping sounds. They are $10 on Amazon.
The WNBA hasn't had a truly marketable star. Caitlin Clark is the first truly marketable star they've had... and the players in the league and media surrounding it are trying to destroy her for it.
If the nfl has 5x the viewers per game but the nba has 5x the games is that all that different?
Can u go over the era where the celtics were a stock on the NYSE. How can we get that again!!!
That sounds interesting as hell 😮
Currently it's weird, they seem to be swinging and some stuff seem desperate. Changing the rules mid season after the 70 pts flurry and the all star fiasco yp the point where it seems too much now. The 180 degrss turns is too drastic. Not suspending Embiid and now Murray is a ridiculius compared to recent history