NBA: Half the Viewers, Half the Attendance, Twice the Profits

A Counterintuitive Sports TV Secret Saves the League

What if the NBA is declining and booming simultaneously? What if its decline is part of an even bigger decline in the sports world? What if, and here’s where it gets especially bizarre, that bigger decline is precisely what’s going to make the NBA flush with cash? It will all be clear soon, trust me.

In the NBA …

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of audience shrink, it was the age of TV money explosion, it was the epoch of attendance drought, it was the epoch of streaming deal cash, it was the season of resurrected light-years, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of Omicron.”

I find the NBA world fascinating for a variety of reasons, but its financial situation is what I keep coming back to lately. Why? Because, on its face, the sport’s continued solvency makes no sense. Before we get into why the NBA’s theoretically sitting pretty going forward, let’s go down the long list of negative trends that should kill a normal business.