Since COVID-19, no sport has been immune to the growing restraints of social distancing and protecting players. It appears the NBA has been hit the hardest as fans are turning away due to their business ties with China and their ongoing political circus. Not wanting to admit it, but the NBA is struggling as the highly anticipated Game 4 between the Los Angeles Lakers and Denver Nuggets wasn’t so “highly anticipated” as analysts predicted.

Thursday night should have been chalked full of sports fan cheering on their favorite team, but instead – Americans thought Tucker Carlson has more entertaining. At the end of the night, Game 4 accumulated 4.6 million viewers. Not too bad, but we will compare the yearly numbers in a minute. While game 4 had 4.6 million, Fox News’s Tucker Carlson had 140,000 more viewers than that.

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What is really shocking is fans don’t want to watch sports because they are becoming more and more political, yet they flock to Tucker Carlson, a political commentator. This concludes the debate about sports and politics, they are almost two sides of the same coin.

Comparing the numbers of Game 4 to the same game in 2018 shows another staggering drop. Game 4 in 2018 had 40% more viewers than this year’s game. As for 2019, it still saw a whopping 27% decline in viewers.

With numbers continuing to plummet, sports analysts are somewhat afraid to tell players what the problem is. Americans, and people in general, don’t want to be reminded about the political climate every time they turn on the television. While it is every person’s right to express their beliefs, one can’t get upset or angry when others turn away, just like what is happening in the NBA.

As the season slowly continues, owners and experts will blame COVID on the low numbers, but other sports don’t seem to be having an issue. College football even managed to gain more viewers than the NBA and they are still in their regular season. With sales already down due to social distancing requirements, the low viewership is a bad sign for the future of the NBA.

This piece was written by Jeremy Porter on September 27, 2020. It originally appeared in DrewBerquist.com and is used by permission.

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