I heard that the Eagles-Giants game a couple of days ago had pretty good ratings, like 8% higher than Thursday Night games last year.Rodster wrote:For me the BIG takeaway is that the NFL is once again being challenged for sports supremacy in the US. Nascar tried and failed due to a bunch of missteps and now NBA is feeling confident enough to make some noise. Their numbers and data must look good enough to make that claim. I know they've converted me away from interest in the NFL. Now the only reason I look forward to the start of the NFL season is that it means it's 6 weeks to the start of the NBA season.wco81 wrote:There are complaints in every sport. Red Sox manager got thrown out for arguing a called third strike yesterday in the playoffs.
Soccer also has all kinds of complaints about the refereeing.
That isn't to excuse the inconsistent or suspicious refereeing. Lebron gets to bowl over defenders often but then he complains that the offici8ating is biased towards perimeter players -- chicks dig the long ball.
I don't think officiating is going to be an obstacle to the growing popularity of the NBA. The favoring of superstars began in the '80s with Bird and Magic. Today, a lot of NBA fans complain about what the Warriors supposedly get away with but you can find videos of Curry being run through on shot attempts with nothing called.
NBA will never be as popular as futbol in Europe and Asia but it could become more popular in those continents than soccer is in US and Canada. However, it doesn't seem to be popular at all in Latin America so that may limit its revenues.
The teams which gross the most revenues in the world are soccer clubs -- Man United, Real, Barcelona, Bayern, etc. NBA has a long way to go before approaching anything like that.
Where the NBA has played it smart is that they're actively recruiting and drafting players from around the world, so it's no longer based on US Colleges. What the NBA may need to consider is creating another League or leagues say the NBA of Europe or even NBA of Asia to grow the sport internationally.
OTOH, NBA seems to do better relatively-speaking among younger demographics and ethnic minorities than the NFL. These groups are more likely to grow than NFL fans, which skews older and whiter.
But there's a long way to go before the NFL is toppled. OTOH, baseball used to be the "top" sport until the NFL passed it by.