For 2023, the NFL generated $13 billion in revenue, while the NBA generated $10.8 billion in revenue. That's one heck of a niche.
Conference Realignment
- Thread starter DavidBenAkiva
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For 2023, the NFL generated $13 billion in revenue, while the NBA generated $10.8 billion in revenue. That's one heck of a niche.
TKG
Member
Reason enough to end it.
Mike Petrik
Member
The figures I find don't seem to corroborate that.
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www.visualcapitalist.com
List of professional sports leagues by revenue - Wikipedia
You Won't Believe How Much More Revenue the NFL Rakes in Over MLB, NBA and NHL
The National Football League has been a financial juggernaut, with the revenue numbers absolutely staggering. We look at how the Shield compares to the other Big 4 leagues.
nesn.com
The "niche" characterization is probably unfair and based on my personal experience alone. I just know more ex-NBA fans than current NBA fans. But the fact remains that NFL viewership is 10 times that of the NBA.
What the NFL crushing the NBA on T.V. means for basketball fans ... eventually
Less success on television likely means less free access.
ziller.substack.com
NFL vs. NBA TV Ratings: Who had the highest 2023 New Year’s viewership?
The NBA and NFL are popular American sports leagues with massive fan bases, generating billions of dollars in television and streaming revenue annually.
SkyBrickey
Member
Yes, Papa John.
So why can't Duke and a handful of other schools create a "college NBA" conference?
I think the narrative that college football drives the revenue is so ingrained in the mindset of every conference commissioner and AD that maybe no one has had the imagination and vision to take a step back and ask, can we create something new and better?
SkyBrickey
Member
The numbers are kind of all over the map. I'm seeing $18B for the NFL and $11B for the NBA.
Whatever it is, it's a strong data point to say college basketball is way undermarketed/undervalued vs college football today.
Whatever it is, it's a strong data point to say college basketball is way undermarketed/undervalued vs college football today.
Whatever the historic numbers are for NBA revenue, they're about to get a big bump. The NBA's TV deal that expires next year was $24bil over nine years, or $2.67bil a year. The deal finalized this summer is 11 years/$76bil, or $6.9bil/year, so more than $4bil a year more in just TV revenue. Nice growth for a niche sport.
JasonEvans
Host, The Duke Basketball Roundup
Well, part of that is the scarcity of games. The NBA has 82 regular season games for each team while the NFL has 17. If each individual NBA game felt as important as a NFL game, I am sure ratings would be significantly higher.
Of course, part of that tradeoff in TV ratings comes around when it comes to attendance. The NFL was watched in person by 18.85 million people last season. NBA attendance was 22.52 million.
I'm not arguing that the NBA is more popular than the NFL, but it may be closer than TV ratings would indicate.
It seems something of that nature is the uncertain path forward that schools will eventually stumble into, but I think we need to let go of this artificial concept of 'conference,' which arose within a completely different context. I believe what we're seeing is a natural evolution away from the concept anyway—the B1G is no longer bound by region and spans the width of the continental U.S.
Eventually, the programs that are willing and able to invest in revenue sports (however they define that) may simply come together and form leagues focused solely around those sports. So perhaps you end up with a college football league that has 60 or so schools, a college basketball league that has two or more times that number (with a good deal of overlap), perhaps a college baseball league with another collection of schools, etc.
Of course, this would impact non-revenue sports dramatically, and Title IX issues also pose a major stumbling block with such a model. It seems certain this route is already somewhat likely for college football, given the many rumblings of a 'mega-conference' (which is basically just a pro or semi-pro league) we've heard for the past decade or so. If that domino falls, given the revenue-generating power of college basketball, following that model would seem logical as well. I just don't know enough about the politics among all of the institutions (small schools v large schools; state v private; etc.) to see how likely the concept is and where the big stumbling blocks lie. But logically it seems to make the most sense.
In the meantime, I'll just keep watching and enjoying Duke wherever it fields a team.
Mtn.Devil.91.92.01.10.15
Member
National coverage of the incredibly poor attendance at SMU this week isn't great for ACC public relations and branding.
interesting in light of what I read yesterday:https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/41136586/smu-football-acc-death-penalty-return-2024
As far as the article you cited goes, I'm not sure what "barely filled" means. The SMU stadium holds 32,000 and the box score listed attendance as 31,172...no doubt (a la Duke) a lot of tickets sold to people who didn't attend, but I'm not sure we're talking about an embarrassment here.
Attendance has been down many, many places, too easy to watch from the couch.
Mtn.Devil.91.92.01.10.15
Member
The pic accompanying my link was rather damning. Looks about 15% full.
yeah, but the band was on the field, not sure when the pic was taken
Mtn.Devil.91.92.01.10.15
Member
I'm not vouching for the veracity of the photo or the narrative. Just saying it is a pretty negative story for a school we just added to our conference.
devilsadvocate85
Member
do you attend Duke games? Par for the course for us....in any event, the news about SMU (if you read my link) is pretty much all good, ESPN kicks in extra money for them (plus Cal and Stanford) and SMU is happy with ZERO payout for the next, what, seven years..... not much negative about that, more money for everyone else in the league including the chronic malcontents.
SMU taking cues from stanford now they're in the same league
Mtn.Devil.91.92.01.10.15
Member
I'm not arguing any of these points. And yes, many Duke games look similar to that pic. My point was it's a story being told (inaccurately it seems) and that's not good for our league.
sagegrouse
Member
Two things. (1) Tailgates are very popular everywhere, so crowd photos may be misleading, depending on when the shot is taken. (2) Attendance everywhere is a problem -- the USC Trojans looked like they filled only 20 % of the Coliseum last night.
how many people will see that? Maybe you're right, but I see the effect as zero.
what I think counts considerably more is the notion (see the ESPN article) that SMU is ecstatic to be in the ACC. That's the story.
JasonEvans
Host, The Duke Basketball Roundup
You think many folks are reading a clearly AI-written story on the Athlon Sports website?
I think the link to it here may have doubled the readership of that trash article (that appears to have been based on a pre-game photo/video).