Isn’t a lot of the decline just the fact that nobody has cable anymore? Everybody I know who watched throughout the weekend just streamed everything. Also, highlights are seemingly more popular than watching games now.
This was like 25% drop from last year. Are you proposing that there were 25% more people streaming this year than last year? That clearly doesn’t make any sense.
I think it makes sense.
Is 100% of the decline due to a rise in pirated streams and people just watching highlight clips on Reddit, YouTube, Twitter, etc? No.
Is a large portion of the decline due to that though? I think so, especially following the trend of the previous lows being 2021 and 2022. 4 of the 5 lowest rated All-Star games (since 1990) are from the last 5 years. Hard to find legitimate stats, but I would imagine that correlates with an increase in viewership for pirated streams and clips.
While other things go into it (format, fan interest, quality, players involved, etc.), all things being equal I would think it would be a major factor. And it's not just the All-Star game, other areas of the NBA plus other sports are all seeing declines (Finals, World Series, Super Bowl, BCS, Final Four championship, etc., all of which have their last 5 years making up the majority of the least watched years over the last 20 or so), which I think help point to the larger trend of declining viewership due to a changing landscape (less TV, easier access to free streams+highlights).
I no longer have TNT so I can't watch it anymore. I think that is true of a lot of people. Put the game on ABC and I can watch it.
While I am sorry to hear that you can’t watch the tnt games any more, there was definitely not a 25% or even 5% drop in people with access to TNT in the last year. So this is definitely not why it dropped.
I don't think using percentages the way you are is the best way to rationalize it.
Cable subscribers dropped by 4m people last year (
according to this source) NBA All-Star game viewership only dropped by 1.7m. So that 1.7m drop can easily fit within the 4m with plenty of room to spare.
Did every one of the 1.7m lose access to TNT? I doubt it, but I bet a significant percentage did. If 20% of people who lost access to TNT would have watched the All-Star game otherwise, that explains away almost half the drop in viewership.
In reality though, there's probably a variety of reasons where the bridge analysis looks something like this:
+100k new fans to the NBA
-450k existing NBA fan not interested in format/style of game
-50k no longer fan of NBA
-800k no longer has legal access to TNT
+50k gained legal access to TNT
-175k prefers to watch just the highlights
-100k had other commitments (work/school/personal)
-200k something more entertaining was on
-75k favorite player not in it
=-1.7m total viewership drop