Bring Back Fans: NBA as the canary in the (sports) coalmine

Sports fandom has been irreparably changed this year and it’s not just about declining television ratings. What can we learn from the NBA as a sample case?

The NBA Finals drew its lowest viewership in decades. Despite the Finals featuring the league’s biggest star in LeBron James and its most iconic franchise in the Los Angeles Lakers, the NBA Finals ratings dropped 51 percent from last year. Predictably, given the supercharged political environment of 2020, many explanations had an ideological basis. The NBA alienated fans by becoming “too woke.” Or, the explanation is anything other than a fan response to the players advocating for social justice. The truth is mixed and more complex.

The collapse of professional sports viewership is an important business and cultural story. Beyond the bottom line, it’s an important story because it says something about fandom in our society. Fandom is a powerful force that connects people. Fandom is also something that individuals use to express their identities. For sports to recover, leagues need to understand how COVID-19 and the events of 2020 have impacted how fans feel about and consume sports. The NBA provides an enlightening case study for considering the future of sports fandom.

The NBA is youth- and star-oriented and is often on the leading edge of social change, at least relative to other sports leagues. Case in point, the NBA and commissioner Adam Silver were lauded for their responses in the early days of COVID-19. USA Today even proposed that Silver’s decisive actions may “have saved sports.” Silver’s March 11 decision to suspend the NBA season began a cascade of suspensions and cancellations across MLB, the NHL, MLS, NCAA Basketball, and other sports.

Silver’s decision was an exercise in principled leadership that put players and fans’ safety above financial considerations. In contrast, organizations like the NCAA initially proposed to keep playing, albeit with reduced or no crowds. Public sentiment quickly solidified around the issue of safety and against business as usual. Sports, including the NCAA, went on hiatus.

Sports came back slowly in “bubbles” with digital fans or empty stadiums with cardboard cutouts. But when everyone got back to playing, many fans were absent. Beyond the NBA, the year-over-year rating declines for the NHL Finals, MLB World Series, and early NFL season were down 61, 36, and 12 percent, respectively.

The first step in trying to bring fans back is diagnosing the underlying causes. The COVID-19 shutdown was a shock to the sports system. After initial shutdowns, we had partial re-openings. These constraints changed how fans watched the games and interacted with each other. Next, the summer protests have begun a new era of player advocacy that may fundamentally change how teams communicate with fans. After these shocks and culture shifts, sports ratings cratered. Why?

Let’s start with some fundamentals. How does fandom work, and what benefits do people get from being fans of teams and players? When I teach sports analytics, I emphasize two essential fandom elements: social identity and group membership. Fandom provides value by helping people express their personalities. Fandom also provides benefits by being something a community can share.

Social change and social identity

First, let’s consider the more controversial explanation for sports’ struggles. Do BLM and player advocacy threaten fandom?

In sports, fans love their teams, and being a Lakers or a Celtics fan can be an essential part of a fan’s identity. Social identity theory suggests that individuals form their self-concepts based on group memberships. In sports, group membership is voluntary. Adding politics creates an additional hurdle to getting fans to want to identify with a team. Suppose a sport or team features messages that fans, or a segment of fans, consider a political message. It will be challenging to retain fans on the opposing side of the political spectrum.

There is evidence that the NBA has found its way, or been forced, into this position. There were Twitter fights between Mark Cuban and Ted Cruz, and between Donald Trump and LeBron James. A quick thought experiment. How likely is someone who owns a MAGA hat to wear a LeBron James jersey?

Logically, the country’s political divide has affected interest in the NBA; the salient question is how much? We do not have conclusive data, but we have some facts. First, Nielsen Media Research has reported that the NBA final viewers’ racial mix remained stable from 2019 to 2020, with about 45 percent white viewers and 55 percent non-white viewers.

A Marist University poll provides some additional insight but also raises questions. The poll found that about 33 percent of people were viewing less, 21 percent were more likely to watch, and 46 percent were not affected by player activism. At first glance, this might suggest a 10 percent swing in sports viewership. Far short of the 50 percent or so drop in ratings.

But a little more digging finds that those less likely to watch sports skewed older and more male. The “watch less” respondents may have heavier baseline levels of sports viewership. There is also an unsurprising partisan split with 70 percent of Republicans indicating they would watch less and 61 percent of Democrats saying they are more inclined to watch. Again, a nine-percentage-point difference but without knowing the base rates of viewing, difficult to interpret.

There is also the issue of what more and less mean. Suppose an angry Republican reduces viewing from twenty hours to zero, and a sympathetic Democrat increases viewing from nothing to a couple of hours. In that case, the overall impact can be massive. But based on the steady year-over-year demographics, the Republicans probably checked out a while ago.

Overall, the evidence for an ideological response is mixed. The decrease in Republican viewing probably exceeds any increase from Democrats. But the swing isn’t nearly enough to get us to a 50 percent plus drop. Combined with similar drops for the NHL’s Final’s ratings and the NBA’s audience demographics’ stability, we can conclude that a political backlash is almost assuredly a minor rather than the main factor.

COVID’s impact on NBA and other fan communities

Second, let’s think about the impact on the community aspects of fandom. What are the consequences to fans from COVID-related constraints on the communal consumption of sports?

The shutdown of sports had obvious immediate consequences for fandom. At first, the sports product was nonexistent. Fans who consumed a steady diet of sports and sports media were suddenly without their fix. Watching sports has long been a habit for many Americans, and every time a fan watched a game, an announcer talked about the next big match up. Suddenly in Spring 2020, there was nothing to watch, and no one hyping the next game.

When sports came back, they reemerged on television and sometimes with limited in-person attendance. Removing the communal aspect of consumption changes the sports product. COVID also shut down the places outside of the arena like sports bars, offices, schools, and most other places people congregate. Watching a game in an arena or a bar means the fan is part of a shared experience. The workplace and schools matter because sports are an easy conversation.

Taking away communal or shared consumption is an enormous issue for sports. The crowd’s excitement puts everyone in a heightened emotional state. In these charged environments, attention is focused, and an exciting dunk or go-ahead 3-point shot becomes incredibly meaningful and memorable.

Taking away settings like schools and work removes opportunities for fans to discuss last night’s game. No longer can people bond over the shared experience of LeBron’s clutch basket or Jimmy Butler’s key defensive stop. Fandom suffers because of a lack of repetition. The next day is no longer an occasion to relive the high points from last night. Talking about Michael Jordan scoring over Craig Ehlo 10 times is 10 occasions for reinforcing fandom.

Fans are also unable to use sports to demonstrate their knowledge. Being an expert or at least “in the know” conveys a certain status. If casual conversations about sports cease, both expert and casual fans have less reason to keep up with teams and stars.

It’s a tough situation for the NBA and other sports. Not only do they miss the revenue from live audiences, but the product also lacks the excitement of the crowd. And continuing lockdowns and partial re-openings limit sports ability to be a part of the culture.

The crowd or community limitations explanation explains the drop off for the NBA, MLB, and the NHL. But what about the NFL?

The differentiator for the NFL is that it has structures in place that preserve a sense of community. The NFL’s Sunday schedule is still a fixture for families, and fantasy football is perhaps the best tool for engaging fans. Fantasy football leagues bring fans together, and the competitive aspects create excitement and opportunities to be an expert.

What’s next?

An in-depth look at fan psychology and the demographics data on viewing helps us understand what happened and prompts the question of what’s next for the NBA and other sports? COVID cases are spiking, and the political climate promises more social turmoil. The NBA is now trying to schedule its next season and has focused on a Dec. 22 start date. In part 2, we switch from fan psychology to marketing and economics. We have a diagnosis; in part 2, we look for cures.