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Sep 17, 2014
7:12:11pm
I'm not finding anything that says the NBA has had declining numbers of fans

over the course of the last several years. In fact, I found one graph, put together by someone studying NBA attendance numbers that show the attendance numbers have been pretty steady the last 10 years with a noticeable dropoff in the lockout year.

fig_league_attendance_by_year.png

The real dropoff in popularity came after MJ retired, but that was 16 years ago.  Obviously, attendance numbers aren't the only indicator of overall popularity of a league. Another indicator is merchandise sales. I found an article that said the NBA ranks second only to soccer for global merchandise sales. I get that this is a global figure and doesn't necessarily indicate it has the second best merchandise sales in the US. I wasn't able to find the domestic merchandise numbers. I'm not sure if it is a figure the NBA would even release.

We could also look at ratings.  Here is a chart comparing NBA Finals rating to World Series ratings since 1984.  It is from Deadspin article.  

wsnbafinalsratings-593x356.png

Both leagues have seen a decline in ratings.  You'll notice however, that the NBA's major decline came after MJ retired, which ended a nearly 2 decade run of Magic/Bird then MJ.  It had a dip in 2003, which coincided with a dearth in talent and some bad characters in the league.  I think David Stern and co. did a great job cleaning things up and you can see that ratings went back up (peaking with Lebron's second year).  

I'm not claiming the NBA is even close to being as popular as the NFL.  But I think it's wrong to claim it has been losing fans for years.  It lost a lot of casual fans after MJ retired, but it has been pretty steady ever since then.  We're now 16 years since MJ retired and the NBA has a very vibrant online presence and is the second most popular sport in the world.

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Originally posted on Sep 17, 2014 at 7:12:11pm
Message modified by hessrp on Sep 17, 2014 at 7:14:38pm
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