The NBA knows its audience, do you know yours?

If you know me well (or even have seen my latest posts on LinkedIn ) you might notice that I'm a basketball fan and a marketing professional. I really like to mix these two topics and, talking about basketball and marketing, no one does it better than the @NBA.

So, let's talk about them.

A few weeks ago - February, 17th to 19th, precisely - the NBA All-Star Weekend happened. I'll not explain here what the event is about, you might click at the link if you wanna see more about it. But, the most shared news at the time was that "NBA All-Star Game 2023 was least watched edition in history as rating hit record low "

So, everybody in the basketball world started to say how NBA should manage this situation, suggestions for improvement, changes, etc. But I would like to bring this discussion to a different point of view: does the NBA cares about these viewerships?

Probably yes, but here's a summary for you about the ASG 2023:

• 27% fewer spectators than 2022
• 22% fewer than 2021
• 4.6m spectators in the US.

The last one is very important: IN THE UNITED STATES.

So, the negative record was only in the United States.

"So what? NBA is an American league."

Yes, it is. But it's not even close to the most watched sports events in USA. I'll tell you.

Recently, Sports Media Watched dropped the 2022 ratings wrap. A list of the most watched sports events in United States . Here's another summary for you:

• There's not even ONE NBA game (or even College Basketball) between the 50 most-watched. The list has 46 NFL games; 2 College Football games; the Winter Olympics (aired after the SuperBowl) and the FIFA World Cup final (France x Argentina)
• Excluding the NFL from this list, there is one college ball game in 7th place (Duke x North Carolina, Final Four), and the NBA Finals, Game 6 (Warriors x Celtics), is the most watched NBA game in the 16th place.
• In a list of the most-watched game by sport, the NBA Finals (game 6) is only the 7th place.

So, it's easy to say that the NBA (or basketball, in general) does not have GREAT ratings on USA TV's. American people love football. That's it. And I'm pretty sure the NBA knows it. They know it's hard to compete with the NFL when we're talking about the audience in America.

What would you do? They decided to go abroad. To go overseas.

The same NBA Finals that was not even in the 50 most-watched games in the US, was a blast in Brazil, Australia and the Philippines . In Brazil, actually, the viewership is bigger than the Superbowl. And 63% of the philippine watch the NBA EVERY SEASON.

If you're still not impressed, what about China? More than 800 million people watch the NBA . This is HUGE.

These numbers are easy to understand when you look into social media. Adding the follower numbers from Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube, the NBA's is almost doubled!

• NBA: 200,9 million
• NFL: 101,3 million

Well, the Super Bowl had 99 million viewers in the USA. Close to the follower's number, right? We can say they're very loyal fans and they are pretty much just in the USA. But NBA fans are around the world. And I must say I'm not saying who is better or worse, it's just the market.

The NFL doesn't need the international market. NBA does! That's why they started this move a long time ago. We could talk about the '92 Olympics, Michael Jordan being global, etc. Or how they positioned the NBA as a brand living the Basketball Culture. But this is a topic for another post.

For now, I'd only say: of course the NBA should be concerned about the All-Star Game viewership. But, this is not where their audience is. Not the most part of, at least.

What about you? Do you know where - or who - is your audience?