NBA’s Woke Politics Costing the League Viewers?

In the last few months, corporations have taken a big financial hit for adopting wokeness. Disney’s bottom line suffered a major blow after it became woke. Target and Ben & Jerry’s saw their stock values plummet following left-wing positions. Bud Light is the gold standard of the “go woke, go broke” model. Its fortunes have continued to plummet after it partnered up with Dylan Mulvaney in a marketing stunt.

In recent years, the sports world has also been criticized for its embrace of wokeness. Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League, and other sports leagues have been criticized for their recent pride month stunts. Let’s also not forget that MLB moved the All-Star Game away from Atlanta because of lies about Georgia’s voter integrity laws.

The National Basketball Association is the godfather of wokeness, both in sports and in business. The NBA was woke when it wasn’t cool. Clay Travis of Outkick says that the NBA has been on a downward spiral for the past few decades, which is similar to what is happening in corporations such as Bud Light.

Travis explained the NBA’s declines last month.

Travis writes that “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?” Travis wonders how the NBA lost so many viewers in a short period of time, after creating tens and millions of monsters during the Jordan era. Why hasn’t this story been told before?” Why are so many of you unaware that this happened? The sports media will not admit that many NBA fans have stopped watching over the last several years.”

Travis compares David Stern’s leadership, who served as the NBA commissioner during the heyday of the ’90s, to that of Adam Silver, the current NBA commissioner. Stern, according to Travis, “did all he could in order to create the biggest fan base,” while Silver let politics “guide him instead of the actual game.”

Silver was the first to embrace wokeness in the NBA when he made Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling sell his team after Sterling made private remarks that were interpreted as racist by others. Silver was a pioneer of the cancel culture.

Silver relocated the NBA All-Star Game to Los Angeles a few short years later after the Tarheel State adopted a law requiring transgender individuals to use the bathroom corresponding with their biological gender. Don’t forget the NBA’s support for Black Lives Matter, which was a major part of its 2020 campaign. This was done while China’s human rights records were ignored.

Travis points out, that despite the NBA’s embrace of radicalism, Silver was universally praised and he couldn’t get over his left-wing politics.

Michael Jordan was the NBA’s most popular star during Stern’s tenure. He is a clear comparison to the current league phenom LeBron. Jordan, who has mostly avoided politics and once said “I never considered myself an activist,” has been a largely non-political figure. James, who thought of himself as a basketballer, has not kept his mouth closed when it comes to wokeness.

Travis writes: “As NBA has embraced the woke politics most notably in the year 2020, the NBA audience has fallen, even though, it is significant, college basketball for both men and women, as well as the Super Bowl, has reached all-time records.”

Yet you’ll never hear sports media lament the decline of the NBA or question why it’s happening. After all, sports media outlets are in full agreement with the wokes at the NBA, and as long as these leagues can virtue-signal, why ask the difficult questions?

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