The real reason NBA viewership has declined in the 2024-25 season

In the beginning of the NBA regular season, viewership had declined significantly. Now that the season is is over, the drop ended up only being a modest 2% from last year. The 2024-25 season averaged 1.53 million viewers on ABC, ESPN, and TNT to last year’s 1.56 million average.

The reason for the decline in NBA viewership

There has been a similar trend in other major U.S. sports leagues, including the NFL and NHL, which saw a 2% and 13% drop, respectively, in the last year. And there are a few good reasons for that.

• Cord-cutting and declining cable audiences: Fewer people are watching traditional TV, which in turn hurt viewership on ESPN and TNT (which saw drops of 7% and 8%, respectively).
• Lack of a dominant rivalry: Viewership hasn’t fully recovered from the highs of the Steph Curry–LeBron James rivalry era, which previously drove big numbers.
• Platform shifts: While ABC helped boost numbers with a 10% gain, more games will move behind streaming paywalls next season due to the NBA’s new 11-year, $77 billion media-rights deal with ESPN, NBCUniversal, and Amazon Prime - possibly reshaping viewership even more.

Notably, Christmas Day games saw a big bounce (up 87%) thanks to more games airing on ABC, signaling that free-to-air access can still drive strong engagement.

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