NBA Rivals Week is a flop: 3 reasons why Adam Silver’s plan won’t help dying viewership
The NBA's Rivals Week is underway, yet the viewership and marketing for it would suggest otherwise. Here's why Adam Silver's idea is a flop.
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The NBA's rivalry week has been a flop for Commissioner Adam Silver
Rivalries are what make sports fun. The drama, the emotion, the utter hatred for the other team, no matter who plays for them, is what makes rivalries an integral part of sports. This is why it is important to know where the NBA and Commissioner Adam Silver are messing up when it comes to its flagship January event, NBA Rivals Week – between 21st to 25th January, 2025.
The Rivals Week was created by the NBA in 2022 in order to promote the different rivalries across the league and create more competitive basketball. The primary reason behind the new initiative by the NBA by dedicating a specific week towards rivalries was to boost viewership through what would normally be a midseason slump in numbers during the NFL playoffs.
This, however, has not panned out the way the league hoped it would. In just the third season since its introduction, the NBA’s Rivals Week is almost already obsolete with little to no attention being paid towards it. But what’s the cause for this? Here are 3 reasons why the NBA’s Rivals Week has not done anything to aid Adam Silver and the league’s viewership problem.
1. The NBA has failed to market it’s premiere rivalry event
With the league already deep into the rivals week, the marketing behind the event has been questionable to say the least. There has been little, if any, hype on social media about the ongoing rivalry week, with most casual fans blissfully unaware that the league is trying to promote some of the classic rivalries in the league.
There have been no dedicated promotional videos or advertisements by the NBA to promote the Rivals Week, sticking to occasional graphics on their social media pages, or the occasional compilation mixtape of past games to promote present rivalries. These have done little to help their cause, and engage fans with what should be a time for head-butting rivalries and discourse between rival fans online.
2. Adam Silver and the league does not know which rivalries to promote
The ongoing matchups scheduled by Adam Silver and the league for the NBA’s Rivals Week just don’t stand up to the league’s historical rivalries. Banking on nostalgia and rivalries of yesteryear only works when legacy teams like the Celtics and Lakers play each other.
The league has also missed some opportunities to showcase the reigning champions’ rivalries this year. The Celtics will not face either of the two Eastern Conference fanbases – the Miami Heat or the Philadelphia 76ers – that they have butted heads with over the last decade or so.
Another example of questionable matchmaking would be the decision to put the Pelicans up against the Grizzlies. Even at full strength, these aren’t teams that have had any high-leverage games against each other recently.
3. The viewership numbers have been (mostly) unaffected by NBA Rivals Week
These questionable decisions have led to the viewership numbers for Rivals Week not making a large impact on the NBA’s overall viewership numbers. The only anomaly to this phenomenon would be the Lakers overtime victory over the Warriors in 2024’s premiere Rivals Week match. The game saw Stephen Curry and LeBron James go back and forth, and if there has ever been a formula to increase viewership for the NBA, it has been to getting James and Curry matched up against each other.
Although the Lakers-Warriors matchup was the highest watched (non-Christmas) game in nearly half a decade, the rest of the games during the Rivals Week failed to draw similar or even comparable viewership.
With the way the viewership has been trending this season, and the negligible hype surrounding the games this year, it looks like the league might have yet another failed venture on its hands in an effort to boost viewership.
After the NBA Cup failed to draw any attention this season, with all-time low viewership numbers, the possibility of the NBA’s Rivals Week failing as well would be a catastrophic failure for the NBA and Adam Silver.
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Armaan Gupta
(342 Articles Published)