Falling $7.4 Billion Short of NFL, Adam Silver Comes Under Fire for Wrong Priorities and Viewership Fall

The NBA has always been a prestigious sporting league for every citizen in the United States. Due to their unwavering dedication and support, the league is currently the biggest basketball league in the world. However, an entrepreneur suggests that the National Basketball Association does not show as much love to their fans as they do. The PBD podcast host Patrick Bet-David talks about how the NBA takes undue advantage of their fanbase and charges exorbitant amounts for their tickets.

Not only that, he even spoke about how the NBA gives priority to the players and not the fans due to which the fans do not get to watch the player they paid for. This has, in turn, affected the earnings of the league in a major way.

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The NBA commissioner Adam Silver has made a lot of changes in the NBA. Owing to that, the league has prospered financially as well as viewership-wise. The league has always given priority to the players and their problems because, obviously; they are the face of the company. However, according to Patrick Bet-David, “Every league has to decide who its number 1 customer is and I think in the NBA their number 1 customer is their player. They’ve sh*t on the customers, they’ve sh*t on the fans and clients, that father who can only spend $600 a year to go watch LeBron play.”

So, seeing that many players have been taking undue advantage of the load management, Adam Silver introduced a new rule called the Player Participation Policy. This ensures that if the player is healthy, he will play the match because the fans have come to see a specific player and not watching him play is a waste of their money. So with this policy in action, no team can rest more than one star player from a game which disproves Bet-David’s theory.

However, he managed to show a statistical analysis of how few viewers are of the NBA compared to the NFL. Even though the NBA plays 82 matches per season and the NFL plays only 17, the NFL earns 21.9 million views and the NBA only manages to get 4.3 million views. Bet-David explained the fall in viewers by saying, “NBA went woke during COVID and became a 100% Political organization. Once it happened, they lost 50% of their viewership in the last 10 years.”

What are the “wrong” priorities of Adam Silver?

Patrick Bet-David criticized Silver’s management style by contrasting it with that of former commissioner David Stern. Furthermore, Bet-David described LeBron James as a controversial character, implying that his presence harms the NBA’s popularity and television numbers because he has been the face of the company for too long and it is time that the NBA finds another face to lead the organization.

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However, despite all this criticism, Adam Silver’s initiative for the In-Season tournament was a massive success for the league. Not only did it have financial benefits, but it also brought in a lot of new viewers. So, the speculation Bet-David made about Silver that he is hampering the growth of the NBA gets nullified.

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However, some arguments made by him make you question whether the NBA is the fans’ league or the players. What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.