Clay Travis: “Here’s what I don’t understand about the NBA. Everybody keeps saying ‘we don’t care if people don’t watch because they’re upset about all of the politics going into the NBA right now.’ This is a stupid position for any business to take. If you are in the mindset of being hyper-political, even if it costs you fans, this is the actions of someone who doesn’t understand basic business. It’s hard to get fans to care about your sport, and that certainly was understood by Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, and Michael Jordan who bequeath to this generation of NBA players an incredibly successful brand and league that they built their entire careers turning people into fans of… The NBA now has half of the viewers that it did when Michael Jordan was in his prime. The NBA has way fewer viewers than it did 20 years ago, and the NFL has more. The NBA has been losing viewers for 20 straight years ever since Michael Jordan stepped off the court… If you are losing viewers because of something that has nothing to do your business, that is the very essence of making a poor business decision. If your viewership is beginning to decline and you are telling fans that we don’t care about you at all, I don’t know whether the average NBA player and league member is sophisticated enough to understand that there are many people who voted for Donald Trump that also like the NBA. It’s likely that you’re telling tens of millions of people who are otherwise interested in your product ‘hey, don’t watch’, solely based on politics. This is a really bad move by the NBA that will cost them for years and years to come.” (Full Segment Above)
Listen to Clay Travis discuss the recent ‘beef’ between President Donald Trump and Lakers star LeBron James, as LeBron recently said that he ‘couldn’t care less’ about Trump’s comments saying that NBA ratings are down because of the massive amounts of players kneeling for the National Anthem, and the highly politicized broadcasts.
Check out the segment above as Clay details why it’s a terrible business model for the NBA to purposely go out of its way to instantly alienate a large portion of its fan base by embracing politics.
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