Editor’s note: This column first appeared on Outkick.
Bud Light’s business has collapsed since April, plummeting 30% in consumption, the result of the company putting a trans influencer on a can to celebrate the NCAA’s March Madness basketball tournament. The resulting social media brouhaha combined with the head of marketing deriding the brand’s out-of-touch humor and fratty connotations has led to the most crushing boycott of a large consumer product brand in modern history. Bud Light, legitimately, might be finished as a popular beer.
As I demonstrated in May with an experiment that went viral, many beer drinkers simply refuse to be seen with a Bud Light.
The Bud Light backlash will be studied in marketing courses for the next 40 or 50 years as a perfect example of what happens when a brand alienates its core audience by embracing values antithetical to its core consumer. But many in the media are already proclaiming Bud Light as a unicorn, the first of its kind conservative boycott that has obliterated decades of goodwill for a company.
BUD LIGHT SALES ‘SHOWING NO SIGNS OF REBOUNDING’, DOWN NEARLY 30% FROM LAST YEAR: REPORT
The American sports media overwhelmingly supports far-left-wing political messaging. They love it because it reflects their own ideals. The vast majority of the sports media wants sports to be filled with left-wing politics. They see it as an affirmation of their own personal beliefs and applaud it.
But this same media won’t write or report the truth about the decline in the NBA’s viewership, because to do so would be seen as a repudiation of their own worldview.
So they pretend everything I’m about to share with you hasn’t happened.
I first became aware of the NBA backlash in 2017, when the league pulled its All-Star Game out of Charlotte. At the time I was hosting a morning sports talk radio show, our lines overflowed with sports fans, people who loved basketball, saying they were going to stop watching the NBA over the political decision. We talked about it on the show, and I wrote about it on OutKick, but the larger American sports media pretended I was crazy as I discussed the backlash.
The entire NBA brand is tarnished thanks to Silver and James’ embrace of woke politics.Â
Because there’s no ardent fan base for Bud Light in the media. No one particularly cares whether Bud Light is or isn’t a popular beer. So the data on Bud Light consumption, by and large, is reported on without bias. But the NBA ratings, which are every bit as reliable as the data on Bud Light consumption, if not more so, is ignored. But if the sports media had done its job, the Bud Light situation might not have happened. Instead of turning Bud Light into a verb (companies now speak of avoiding being “Bud Lighted”), companies would have said they hoped they didn’t get NBA’d. There would have been more of a reticence for brands to wade into left-wing politics.
Even now, just the mere suggestion of the NBA’s collapsing viewership will send the usual left-wing sports media subjects into fits of rage. Don’t believe me? Search mentions of my name and NBA on social media once this story goes viral. The vociferousness of the response to facts and data — the willful blindness and fits of rage this story will entail — provides all the evidence of the bias I need. The left-wing sports-media simply can’t handle the idea that Michael Jordan was right when he said the reason he didn’t get involved in politics was because “Republicans buy sneakers, too.”
NBA alienated fan base by going woke
In fact, 35.856 million people watched that game, never before and never since have more people watched a basketball game in American history.
That game represented the absolute apex of the NBA’s influence in American sporting life.
But it wasn’t just that game alone, that six-game Jazz-Bulls series averaged 29.4 million viewers, an all-time high for the NBA Finals in America.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver, left, and Charlotte Hornets owner Michael Jordan pose for a photo during a news conference to announce Charlotte, N.C., as the site of the 2017 NBA All-Star basketball game, June 23, 2015. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton, File)
Twenty-five years later, this past season’s five-game NBA Finals averaged just 11.64 million viewers, one of the lowest audiences on record and a continuation of the NBA’s collapsing ratings. Indeed, four of the five lowest–rated NBA Finals of the past 30 years have occurred in the past four years. (12.4 million viewers in 2022, 9.91 million viewers in 2021, 7.45 million viewers in 2020.)
How did this happen? How in the space of a generation did the NBA, which created tens of millions of monster fans in the Jordan era, lose so many viewers? And why has this story not been told before? Why do so many of you have no idea this has happened at all?
Because the sports media won’t admit what’s clear: Many basketball fans have stopped watching the NBA over the past several years.
Let me repeat that: More people were interested in watching WOMEN’S COLLEGE BASKETBALL in 2023 than the NBA Finals in 2020 and 2021. That is, at the same time that the NBA was setting all-time viewership lows, women’s college basketball was setting all-time viewership highs.
And it’s not just women’s college basketball.
The opening rounds of the 2023 NCAA men’s tournament were the most watched in history.
So people like basketball on TV; in fact just this very year all-time record highs were being set in college basketball, both men’s and women’s.
And it’s not just basketball.
We saw an all-time high in viewership for the Super Bowl this year, too. 115.1 million people watched the Kansas City Chiefs play the Philadelphia Eagles, the most ever. That is, the single-most–watched football game of all time just happened in February.
Where did the viewers go?
So what’s happened to the NBA collapsing viewership? Why has it happened?
Let’s dive in and discuss.
First, here’s the past 30 years of NBA Finals ratings.
You can see there was a decline after the Chicago Bulls era ended, but then the NBA rebounded as Kobe Bryant became the face of the league, and a young LeBron began to rise as well.
What’s interesting is that the NBA’s rise didn’t just correspond to Jordan, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, it was directly connected to David Stern, the NBA’s commissioner. Stern sold basketball as a sport for all. Does anyone remember the NBA is FANtastic that sold all of us on the joys of NBA basketball, of being a fan?
I could probably write an entire book on Stern and Jordan’s NBA compared to Silver and LeBron’s NBA, but Stern was a maestro of branding, he had his pulse firmly on where the American sporting public was. He took the NBA from airing on delayed programming — it wasn’t even live when he became commissioner — to just shy of 36 million people watching a game.
Yes, Jordan was the linchpin, but Stern was the guru of the sport’s ascendance. I have no idea what Stern’s politics were like, by the way, just like I have no idea what almost anyone’s politics were in that era of 1980s and 1990s basketball. We just didn’t care. The sport was the main dish, we came for basketball excellence, everything else was noise.
NBA never replaced David Stern
NBA commissioner Adam Silver speaks during a press conference before the first quarter of the NBA Finals game 1 between the Denver Nuggets and the Miami Heat at Ball Arena in Denver on Thursday, June 1, 2023. (AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
As Silver embraced woke politics, so, suddenly, did LeBron James, who said nothing political for much of his early tenure in the NBA, but, I believe, realized he wasn’t going to ever be Jordan, so he started trying to become Muhammad Ali instead. (There’s a long discussion of this in my last book, which came out in 2018). LeBron’s first step in left-wing politics, at least that I can remember, came when he campaigned with Hillary Clinton in Ohio and then posed with a safety pin on his jersey after Donald Trump defeated Hillary in the 2016 election. (As a sign of left-wing solidarity in the early days of the Trump administration, left-wingers affixed safety pins to their clothes.)
Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James gestures to a referee during the first half in Game 3 of an NBA basketball Western Conference semifinal against the Golden State Warriors Saturday, May 6, 2023, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
A few years later, LeBron claimed that a racial slur had been scrawled on the gate of his $20 million mansion — an allegation the Los Angeles police investigated and found no evidence ever occurred, a result you also probably never saw covered by the woke NBA media. All of this led to the 2020 season, when players took the court with “Black Lives Matter” emblazoned on the court and replaced the names on their jerseys with left-wing political slogans, including: Black Lives Matter, Say Their Names, Respect Us, How Many More, I Can’t Breathe, Enough, Say Her Name, Vote, Justice, I Am a Man, Liberation, and the somewhat puzzling Education Reform.
This culminated when multiple teams refused to take the court for playoff games after Jacob Blake, a serial felon who was armed with a knife and attempting to attack a black woman in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was shot by a white police officer.
Let me repeat, the NBA canceled playoff games because players refused to take the court after a black man tried to attack a black woman, who had called police to protect her.
If we add 15% to the Jordan 1998 Finals, Jordan’s series would have attracted 33.35 million viewers to LeBron’s 7.45 million, meaning the NBA’s decline in viewership is actually even more significant than it appears. (By the way, LeBron’s Space Jam 2, when adjusted for inflation, also did a fraction of the box office gross as Jordan’s original Space Jam. When you combine that with Jordan’s shows consistently trouncing LeBron’s shoes — even after he retired, Jordan outsells every current NBA player combined — it turns out that appealing to everyone who likes sports is a much better game plan than only appealing to the woke.)
The 2020 NBA Finals were, admittedly, played in the bubble during COVID, but the 2021, 2022 and 2023 viewership has also been atrocious. Each of these four years represents four of the worst five years for viewership in the past 30 years. But do you know what had more viewers in 2020 than the NBA Finals?
A documentary about the 1998 Chicago Bulls!
FILE – Scottie Pippen, #33, and Michael Jordan, #23, of the Chicago Bulls are seen smiling at the Chicago Bulls Championship Parade and Rally on June 16, 1997, at Grant Park in Chicago, Illinois. (Steve Woltman/NBAE via Getty Images)
Let me repeat that: A documentary about Jordan’s 1998 Chicago Bulls that aired in May of 2020 on ESPN actually had more viewers than the actual NBA Finals with LeBron’s LA Lakers airing on ABC.
But it hasn’t just been the NBA Finals.
The entire NBA brand is tarnished, thanks to Silver and James’ embrace of woke politics.
The 2023 NBA All-Star Game played in Salt Lake City had just 4.59 million viewers, an all-time TV viewership low for the all-star game. The last time the NBA All-Star game was played in Salt Lake City was 1993. That year, 22.91 million people watched. That means the NBA All-Star game, even with the 15% out-of-home bonus, lost a staggering 80% of its audience from 1993 to 2023.
Okay, the data speaks pretty clearly here, right? As the NBA has embraced woke politics, most notably in 2020, the NBA’s audience has collapsed even as, significantly, the audience for college basketball, both women’s and men’s, and the Super Bowl has set all-time highs.
Now, to be fair, the NBA has many issues — top players taking games off as part of load management, a regular season that drags on for too long, players and owners that often seem to dislike the fans — but why are most of you just seeing all of this viewership data laid out like this for the first time? Why hasn’t anyone pointed out that the NBA was the first Bud Light?
Because of the woke sports media, they’ve failed to do their job and simply share facts with sports fans. They’ve protected the NBA from the consequences of embracing woke politics, because the media loves the NBA embracing woke politics.
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Silver was asked about it. “There was no discussion about moving the All-Star game from Salt Lake City,” he said. “I think by us coming to Utah and demonstrating what our values are in terms of diversity, respect and inclusion, I think we can have the greatest impact.”
Silver then attempted to explain the disparate treatment. “In North Carolina, we were working directly with the team there, and it appeared to us that there was an opportunity to have a direct impact on that law, meeting with and working with the larger business community.
“Our initial view working with the Utah Jazz is that we’re going to have to find a way to work in that environment and to create an inclusive environment for our game, rather than take the position that we have somehow an independent ability to change the minds of the voters of Utah.”
Why would Silver make this comment?
Because the NBA’s television deal is coming up soon, and he realizes, even if he won’t admit it directly, that the viewership data is clear: Embracing woke politics has been disastrous for the NBA.
Author’s note: My new book, “American Playbook,” will be released on August 8th and I’ll be doing events all over the country. You can buy your copy here, and it will arrive at your home on the release date.
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