Absurdity
The NBA is expected to pass the NFL in domestic views this season.
By BSN Staff, . BSN Network. Satire.
A media analytics firm headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, released a report Tuesday projecting that the NBA will surpass the NFL in total domestic viewership before the end of the current season, ending professional football's unbroken 38-year run as the most-watched sport in the United States.
The firm, Longitudinal Sports Metrics Group, said its models account for streaming, linear broadcast, and what the report calls "ambient viewing," defined as television sets tuned to a game in a space where a human being is technically present but not necessarily conscious.
Longitudinal Sports Metrics Group was previously responsible for projecting, in 2021, that recreational pickleball would surpass Major League Baseball in total participation hours by 2024. That projection was accurate to within six weeks.
"We understand this is uncomfortable," said Dr. Patricia Holden, the firm's Director of Projection Confidence, in a statement released alongside the report. "We want to be clear that we checked the numbers several times, and then we checked them again, and then one of our analysts went home and did not return the following morning, and we checked them one more time after that, and they were still the same numbers."
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell responded to the projection in a statement that described the report as "speculative" and "not reflective of football's enduring cultural centrality," and which ran to eleven paragraphs without once acknowledging that eleven paragraphs is a long response to something speculative.
Goodell added that the NFL's own internal viewership data showed a "strong and stable audience" and that the league remained "the unquestioned home of American sports consumption," a sentence his communications team did not remove before sending.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, reached by phone, said only: "I appreciate you calling."
He then waited.
The projection, if it holds, would represent the most significant shift in American sports media in a generation. Analysts at three separate networks said, independently and without coordination, that they would need to check with their bosses before commenting, and then did not comment.
Among ordinary viewers, reaction was more direct.
"I've been watching football my whole life," said Marcus Reilly, 44, of Columbus, Ohio, who described himself as a lifelong Browns fan and a man who had "never voluntarily watched a basketball game" until this past October. "I don't know what happened. I turned on a game and LeBron wasn't even on the team anymore and I still couldn't stop watching. I called my brother and he had the same game on. We talked for two hours. My wife said it was the most I had spoken in eleven years."
Reilly said he still watches the Browns.
"That's different," he said. "That's not about entertainment."
The NFL's television partners were not available for comment, which three people familiar with the situation described as unusual, and one person described as "a type of comment."
Longitudinal Sports Metrics Group noted in a footnote to the report that their projections carry a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points, and that even at the low end of that range, the NBA still finishes ahead.
The footnote was two pages long.
Dr. Holden said the firm stands behind its methodology and is available for follow-up questions "on any business day that is not a Sunday, because on Sundays we watch football, obviously, we are not monsters."
Roger Goodell did not respond to a request for comment on the footnote.
Three sources close to his office described him as "fine."
All three sources used that exact word.
This is satire. The events and quotes are invented and none of it is real news.