On the surface, the NBA’s viewership data seems contradictory. During the 2022-23 season, which averaged just 1.59 million viewers in the regular season and 11.6 million for the Finals, the league notched a record 32 billion views across league, team, and individual athlete social media accounts. That was a 10 percent year-over-year increase, even as regular-season TV viewership fell 1 percent and Finals ratings dropped 6.5 percent. The divergence is especially pronounced around marquee events. At February’s All-Star Weekend, for instance, the NBA drove more than 1 billion views across its social channels on Friday and Saturday—before the actual game—up 17 percent year-over-year. And yet, viewership for the All-Star Game declined 13 percent.

You could make the argument that the NBA is more popular than ever. Certainly, Silver would contend that there’s a flywheel effect generated by all those clips, which keep fans engaged and ostensibly grow the sport. But TikTok impressions aren’t exactly what NBCU’s Brian Roberts, ESPN’s Jimmy Pitaro, and Amazon’s Jay Marine thought they were buying for $77 billion.

It’s not easy to quantify the economic value of the NBA’s social media presence, but we can draw some inferences by comparing the NBA to other leagues. In 2024, the NBA generated roughly twice as many social impressions as MLB, 3.5x more than the NFL, and 8x more than the NHL, according to research published by Sports Value. In 2024, the NBA’s social media helped to drive about $731 million in sponsor media value—Relo Census’s metric for the monetary value of brand exposure—just under three times what the NFL generated in the same year. But it’s less clear how the NBA, itself, can monetize all that media awareness. Silver will need answers before the league’s rights renewal a decade from now.

It helps that Silver has youth on his side. More than 60 percent of younger sports fans said they watched basketball games either in person or at home—making it the second-most-watched sport, per a PwC study from earlier this year. So while Gen Z is watching less sports overall, compared to Millennials and Gen X, basketball is what they’re more likely to view. And a significant driver for their interest is social media exposure, discovery, and engagement. If streaming makes it easier for someone with even a passing interest to tune into a quarter using a service they already subscribe to—Prime Video, Disney+, Hulu, and Peacock reach a combined 240 million subscribers in the U.S.—then the NBA’s highlight-clip culture could become a significant top-of-funnel marketing tool. As Gen Z becomes older, more affluent, and more homebound, their social media engagement should mature into regular game viewership.

Silver’s comments about international expansion didn’t get as much pickup as his “highlights” quip, but it’s impossible to understand the commissioner’s expansion plans without considering the league’s ambitions abroad: About 70 percent of those who engage with NBA social content live outside of the United States.

No one can deny that the NBA is having a global moment. A European expansion league is in the works and more games are being scheduled to specifically focus on those audiences. Dončić, Jokić, Giannis, and Wembanyama are four of the most-watched players in the league. Although some experts have argued that a lack of American superpower in the league is to blame for declining viewership—LeBron James is close to retiring, Steph Curry is slowing down, and Kevin Durant is always a question mark these days—the new guard of talent may drive a true expansion business in Europe. As of this year, about one in every six players—or 16 percent of the league—is European.

The league’s global turn has been years in the making. It took various measures over the last decade to make games more accessible to European audiences, including shifting game times on Saturdays. And Silver is starting to see results. Between 2015 and 2024, NBA primetime game viewership on Saturdays and Sundays grew by 139 percent in Portugal, 137 percent in France, 109 percent in Spain, and 27 percent in the U.K.

That growing audience—supported by a social media presence that transcends time zones and delivers a slew of daily highlights nine months a year—sets the NBA up to compete with other leagues abroad. Roger Goodell is focused on Germany, the U.K., and Brazil; MLB’s Rob Manfred is hyperfocused on Japan and Mexico; and even the NHL’s Gary Bettman leaned into last year’s 4 Nations Face-Off tournament, which drove significant domestic viewership for the league. Part of Amazon’s interest in the NBA was its international audience, and part of proving the existence—and potential value—of that audience is in its social media presence. It’s what Silver repeatedly points to when talking about the NBA’s enduring popularity in the face of decreasing ratings.

Meanwhile, don’t rule out a U.S. ratings rebound. In the early ’90s, Sports Illustrated declared the NBA all but dead, right before Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen created one of the most-watched team dynasties with the Chicago Bulls. Sure, the internet broke legacy media into a thousand pieces. But live sports remain a last vestige of the monoculture, and other superstars and rivalries will come along. In that context, Silver’s comments about the NBA being a highlights-driven game are less an admission of defeat than a call for league stakeholders to reconsider what constitutes success. If the NBA is going to get people to watch its games, it needs to capture their attention when the games aren’t on, when the league isn’t in session—and they need to do it in the U.S. and outside of it.

I don’t think we’re too far out from Goodell, Manfred, and Bettman saying similar things. They just need to secure their version of the $77 billion that gave Silver the confidence to say the quiet part out loud.

That was great. Thanks, Julia. See you all on Thursday.

John