• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, October 27, 2023

For years, growing interest around the NBA has focused on the post-season -- starting in mid-April and running through mid-June.

The problem is that much of this can diminish excitement in much of the regular-season activity -- especially in the opening weeks that just started up this month.

To that end, some teams -- in March -- end up pulling their star players off the court in regular-season games to give them some rest for the all-important post-season playoffs.

But where does all this leave those fans of those regular-season games? 

Now, the league has come up with an "in-season” tournament to spur interest -- the NBA Cup -- a month-long event that runs concurrently with the regular-season games. The idea is to generate early-season interest and excitement especially for the early October to December regular season period.

The point? To boost TV viewership and subsequent advertising revenue.

In the 2022/23 season, 1.59 million Nielsen-measured viewers watched NBA regular-season games across ABC, ESPN and TNT -- a slight decline versus the previous year.

This year so far, the first two national TV opening games of the new NBA 2023-2024 season -- Lakers-Nuggets, Suns-Warriors -- averaged 2.78 million Nielsen-average viewers.

The NBA would like to grow viewership and engagement amid the fall/winter period, where there can be lots of sports interest -- especially the NFL. There is also college football and the NHL.

The NFL especially continues to dominate all TV viewing in these fall and winter months -- not just sports -- averaging around 16 million to 17 million per national TV game. 

Don't believe for a minute that the NBA can compete directly with the NFL during this period -- for its viewers or for its brands. However, imagine that the NBA just wants to take a bigger bite of the large overall fourth-quarter viewership to gain some early-season buzz. 

The tournament runs from November 3- 28, with a championship on December 9.

For sure, this is only just a month. These NBA Cup/’In-tournament’ games will be played on Tuesday and Friday -- days of the week where the NFL doesn't play.

But they will also count toward the total 82-game game schedule. The end of the tournament in early December means little conflict against the last big week of the year.

The NBA is probably hoping for a nice early Christmas present.