The NBA might be a rapidly growing international sport and is considered to be among the most popular American leagues outside the country, the NFL remains the king within the USA.
The appeal of the NFL is almost insurmountable, despite NBA players being more notable in terms of their popularity. Almost everyone watches the Super Bowl with many considering the day the game is played as an unofficial holiday.
The 2023 Super Bowl saw superstar quarterback Patrick Mahomes for the Kansas City Chiefs faces the No. 1 seed Philadelphia Eagles, with the Chiefs emerging victorious. According to Nielsen, the event had an average of 113 million viewers.
All 6 NBA Finals games between the Golden State Warriors and Boston Celtics couldn’t beat that number even when put together, averaging 12.4 million viewers per game. Even when multiplying that number by 6 for each game played, the viewership indicates to be 74.4 million.
The NFL is the world’s most profitable sports league for a reason and the Super Bowl is one of the main reasons. Even non-football fans watch the event due to its cultural impact, something that can’t be said for the NBA Finals which is contested over a 7-game series.
Can NBA Viewership Begin To Rival The NFL?
In an age where television ratings are steadily dropping due to a larger shift to streaming, the NBA has faced its own pains. Finals ratings had been consistently going down over 2020 and 2021 until Stephen Curry‘s Warriors returned to take on a historic franchise like the Boston Celtics in 2022.
The last NBA Finals series that’s come close to cracking the figures of the Super Bowl over a series was in 2017 as the Cleveland Cavaliers defended their championship from the Golden State Warriors after they added Kevin Durant to the squad, as mentioned in the Reddit post.
Within the US, it seems that the cultural impact of the NFL will not wane enough for the NBA to become the No. 1 sports league. But internationally, the NBA already has a larger audience that may just keep growing due to the worldwide popularity of basketball as a sport.
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