Is the NBA becoming a niche sport? A few days ago, this question was debated at Ball Hype by Dan Shanoff and Tom Ziller. Shanoff –of DanShanoff.com and The Sporting Blog — took the position that the NBA is fading in popularity. Ziller — of NBA FanHouse and Sactown Royalty — took the opposing viewpoint.
Many people seem to view debates as a contest, with clear winners and losers. In my experience in academia, debates are often just an exchange of information. People do not win (or try and win). We simply state our position as best we can and hope to learn something.
All that being said (and it does make academia sound kind of nice), if the Shanoff-Ziller debate was a contest, this wasn’t very close. Ziller clearly won.
This is not necessarily, though, because Ziller demonstrated superior debating skills (he might have, but that’s not the point). No, Shanoff lost this debate because his position is contradicted by the data.
In 2006-07 the average NBA team attracted 726,954 fans during the regular season. And this was the all-time record. Let me repeat. Last season the NBA – which Shanoff says is declining in popularity – set an all-time attendance record. And this is a per-team average record (of course they also set a record for total attendance).
To put this mark in perspective, 20 years ago – during the peak of the Boston-LA rivalry — the NBA’s per team average was only 550,190 fans. Across the past 20 years, while the U.S. population has grown 23.8%, NBA attendance has grown 38.7%.
The NBA’s Oklahoma Problem
We should note, though, that attendance is down this year. According to the attendance data posted at ESPN.com, NBA teams are currently on pace to post an average of only 709,219 fans. So after setting attendance records in 2006-07, 2005-06, and 2004-05, the NBA has experienced a slight dip.
Is this because of the general problems with the national economy? Although Martin Schmidt and I have found that Major League Baseball attendance is impacted slightly by changes in the national economy, my sense is that this is not the story in the NBA.
When we look at the individual teams, we can see that 50.6% of the decline can be tied to Oklahoma.
The Hornets left Oklahoma City and have seen their attendance decline by a projected 164,410 fans. Seattle – the team that is doing everything to move to Oklahoma – has seen its attendance go down by a projected 104,571 fans. All together, the teams either leaving or going to Oklahoma account for more than half of the league’s drop-off in attendance.
One should note that two other teams – Indiana and Sacramento – have also seen significant drop-offs at the gate (primarily due to the disappointing play of each team). All together, New Orleans, Seattle, Indiana, and Sacramento account for the entire decline we see in league attendance. In sum, it doesn’t look like the NBA’s drop-off this season is due to changes in the national economy. And it certainly doesn’t look like it is part of a decline in league popularity.
One last note on the attendance story. You certainly you couldn’t get very far telling the declining popularity story in Portland – where attendance has grown more than anywhere else this season. Or in Boston and Golden State, where attendance has also increased. Yes, as The Wages of Wins argues, an individual team’s gate is driven primarily by wins (or to put it another way, we should not be surprised that the Denver Nuggets – even with Allen Iverson – are on pace to draw fewer fans this season).
The Television Rating Story
Missing from the Shanoff-Ziller debate was much reference to any data. Shanoff, though, did note that last year’s NBA Finals – between the Spurs and Cavs – did not get very good ratings.
Of course, drawing an inference from one data point is a problem. Although I have not seen published research on what drives ratings for NBA Finals, I suspect that there are two issues with a Spurs-Cavaliers final.
1. These are both small markets. Beyond Cleveland and San Antonio, who else would care?
2. These teams were also not very competitive. It was pretty clear that San Antonio was the much better team. A contest between two small-market competitors, where we pretty much can guess the outcome at the onset, is not a contest that is going to get you very high TV ratings.
I would add that according to John Dempsey of Variety (Hat Tip to Henry Abbott of TrueHoop.com) NBA ratings are up quite a bit this year.
Quoting from the Dempsey article: National TV audiences are flocking back to the NBA, led by double-digit gains in all the adult-male demographics on ABC, ESPN and TNT.
So let me summarize:
The NBA set an attendance record in 2006-07. TV ratings are up this year. And this is a league in decline? I think the data clearly rejects this argument.
– DJ
Wages of Wins Journal 
Tommy_Grand
March 28, 2008
“Beyond Cleveland and San Antonio, who else would care?”
Only diehard NBA fans.
Rick
March 28, 2008
And all of this does not take into account the international interest in the NBA which I’m certain far surpasses interest in any of the other Big 4 leagues…
Animal
March 28, 2008
Wall Street Journal quotes Bradbury today on whether Torre overrated. great article.
Animal
March 28, 2008
Weird, I’m blocked from posting the link to the article. Anyway it’s a worthwhile read. Based on stat work by Hardball Times.
Animal
March 28, 2008
“There’s also some evidence that Mr. Torre negatively impacts the performance of his players. Last fall, David Gassko, a former major-league consultant and a contributor to the Hardball Times Web site, did a study of major-league managers through 2006, determining how many additional games a manager won or lost for his team per season. Of the 422 managers he studied, Mr. Torre’s score was the sixth-worst.”
Mountain
March 28, 2008
Other ways to slice the data:
17 teams saw attendance decline season to date compared to all of last season. (4 others were stable or gained up to 23.)
10 teams fell by at least 971 per game
Only 4 teams gained by that much
Take them out (the mirror action of taking the worst 4 out) and the average decline increases by 78% (compared to avg for all 30) to -824 on average for 26 teams or between a 4-5% attendance decline in one season for all but the 4 best cases.
Last year was a record but most of this season’s data supports a softening.
Mountain
March 28, 2008
70% of the league is showing year to year attendance decline, stable or an increase of less than 0.2%
Perhaps the debate should define the reference point for decline.
Over last 20 years attendance is up.
But let’s see what happens in next few years. Perhaps this season was the tipping point.
And if you treat TV ratings to the same long review (instead of just one year to year data observation) it is a mixed story with the cable “niche” doing ok but national broadcasts, finals and all-star games showing major declines over at least last 10 years
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Basketball_Association_Nielsen_ratings
Dan
March 28, 2008
Denver is one win away from their total from last year, on pace to win 5 more than last year. So they should have higher attendance based on that, not lower.
Mountain
March 28, 2008
Consideration of tv ratings should include local broadcasts but I am not aware of a good summary of that data.
ty w
March 29, 2008
While I agree in principal with your assertion, I think focusing purely on attendance numbers ignores something important that is missing from the modern game, and I think it primarily has to do with architecture.
The “Centres” of today, with their antiseptic, distant, bowl seating and skyboxes, lack the energy of the “Arenas” and “Gardens” of yesterday, and it detracts from the game.
Chicago Stadium, Cobo Arena, The MECCA, The Boston Garden, The Forum, The Spectrum… on and on… when these “Thunderdome” buildings were abandoned we lost something sweaty and visceral and immediate and great and real about the NBA.
Mountain
March 30, 2008
I can see that… it seems that the arena operators are aware of that too and try to recapture that energy of older more intimate arenas with the loud music and the hype they stream over the jumbotron.
Mountain
March 31, 2008
Henry Abbott’s link to that Harris Poll showing NBA is the favorite sport of just 4%, less than 1/3rd of the Jordan peak is suggestive on NBA being at least more of a niche sport now.
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=866
Now of course favorite sport and follower are not the same. There are probably surveys of followership out there- if any wanted to take the issue in greater depth. Who is on national broadcast tv is a simple measure of mainstream / niche but leagues can have different revenue models, though the choice of models is influenced by size of audience.
Foster Caldaroni
July 17, 2009
The only sport I watch and follow is baseball.
football and hockey are alright. I hate basketball.
Frank
January 30, 2011
This old article looks even dumber in retrospect. Who would care about a Spurs v. Cavs final? How about everyone who is a fan of basketball? It’s hard to believe we live in a world where a person could be so dumb as to disagree with the point that you cannot be a considered a fan of a sport if you don’t bother to watch the championship game.