Speaker 1: We gotta talk about this post in season tournament drama
Speaker 1: thanks to Ethan Strauss of the House of Strauss substack.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start with the fact that I like Ethan Strauss.
Speaker 1: Ethan Strauss isn't afraid to say we'll call him intentionally controversial, fiery,
Speaker 1: We'll call it the counter take. He's the king of
Speaker 1: the counter take, right, and he's, as we would say,
Speaker 1: a curmudgeon. I like that about Ethan Strauss, not afraid
Speaker 1: to not maybe to anti suck the NBA's dick. He's
Speaker 1: the kind of guy who shits on your favorite thing
Speaker 1: because he is a hipster, right, anything that's popular. Ethan
Speaker 1: Strauss hates and I like Again, I like Ethan Strauss,
Speaker 1: but he is here to tell us. Now, Ethan Strauss,
Speaker 1: what we saw with our own eyes. I like the
Speaker 1: n season twournament. Thought it was successful, thought it was good.
Speaker 1: We are wrong. Actually, the end season tournament, according to
Speaker 1: Ethan Strauss, is a complete and utter failure. Close it up,
Speaker 1: move on. Nothing to see here. Folks got to say
Speaker 1: the words flop. Okay, Ethan Okay, So this is his point.
Speaker 1: It's a simple, glasses, It's a simple in season tournament
Speaker 1: Excel spreadsheet, get your goggals and your calculator out return
Speaker 1: on investment because the NBA apparently put too much time,
Speaker 1: too much money into the ist for what he calls
Speaker 1: pedestrian returns his evidence. The semifinals in Vegas got one
Speaker 1: point six million viewers for Bucks Pacers and two point
Speaker 1: two million for Lakers Pelicans. He says those are numbers
Speaker 1: that quote look like the regular season, and then says
Speaker 1: that the first round of the playoffs got four million viewers.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you see shit and you think to yourself, this
Speaker 1: can't be a real take, this is not. Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: wrong in how I'm reading this. I was speechless. I
Speaker 1: get it. Ethan. You're the squeaky will. That's what you
Speaker 1: want to do. You want to tell us why everything
Speaker 1: we like sucks. You're the voice of descent. You're the
Speaker 1: one pointing out that we are not high brow enough,
Speaker 1: we are not seeing the world the right way. And
Speaker 1: as someone who likes to point out that people aren't
Speaker 1: seeing the world the right way, I understand it. Some
Speaker 1: people just do it, though, because they want to do it,
Speaker 1: and that is Ethan Strauss. In some cases they're right,
Speaker 1: but not in this one. You cannot judge a game
Speaker 1: in December against the playoff game, even like, you know,
Speaker 1: I see what you're doing. You know, I see what
Speaker 1: you're doing and I don't like it. That is disingenuous
Speaker 1: on every level. You cannot compare a regular season game
Speaker 1: in December to a playoff game. What you should do
Speaker 1: is compare a regular season game in December this year
Speaker 1: to a regular season game in December last year. We
Speaker 1: wanted to see what it was like to have some intensity.
Speaker 1: Back it up, hold on. Really, the whole plan was,
Speaker 1: can we just get back to basketball? Can we just
Speaker 1: get back to these guys giving a shit on a
Speaker 1: random Tuesday? Apparently, yes, five hundred thousand dollars is enough
Speaker 1: to get people to care about meaningless regular season games that. Frankly,
Speaker 1: before this year, no one cared about. Everyone was load managing.
Speaker 1: We didn't know who we were gonna see on a
Speaker 1: nine to night basis. There was nothing to be excited
Speaker 1: about until post All Star Breakdow trade deadline, and now
Speaker 1: we're talking to Ethan and guess what it worked. On average,
Speaker 1: the n season tournament games had a ratings boost of
Speaker 1: thirty percent. Apparently, according to Ethan, that's not enough in
Speaker 1: its first year. Mean, do I need to remind people
Speaker 1: that Amazon failed miserably for like ten straight years. It
Speaker 1: lost money. Social media impressions went through the roof for
Speaker 1: the N Season Tournament that this is the first season
Speaker 1: we're talking about here, and it was already poppin'. See
Speaker 1: he doesn't know what's popping. Strauss wrote his screed before
Speaker 1: the ratings for the finals of the IST were released.
Speaker 1: Turns out that was a mistake because the n Season
Speaker 1: Finals were six million viewers. In other words, the largest
Speaker 1: audience for a non Christmas Day game in the last
Speaker 1: six years. Ooh shsh. The other thing that annoys me
Speaker 1: about this article was that his statement that Netflix pulled
Speaker 1: out of televising the IST because the ratings were tepid.
Speaker 1: That's just not even true. Come on, dude, Netflix was
Speaker 1: never going to televise the first season of the N
Speaker 1: Season Tournament, and their interest in working with the NBA
Speaker 1: waned not because it's not a good idea, but because
Speaker 1: their first attempt at televising lia Is Sports aka the
Speaker 1: Netflix Cup flopped so bad that they had to go
Speaker 1: back to the drawing board. Friend of show, Sam Vassini,
Speaker 1: the voice of Real Reason had this to say. The
Speaker 1: NBA is obviously hoping to package this as a value
Speaker 1: add to their impending rights negotiation that will likely involve
Speaker 1: both streamers and traditional cable networks. Yeah, this is just
Speaker 1: a cherry on top, not the actual pie. What are
Speaker 1: we talking about? This is first year was designed to
Speaker 1: be a lost leader for the NBA. With the money
Speaker 1: that they put into marketing colorful floors, jerseys, etc. Etc.
Speaker 1: It takes time to build a brand, Ethan, and you
Speaker 1: know this man. His final point was that the ist
Speaker 1: was about bringing in new viewers, which I think is
Speaker 1: entirely wrong. I think the premise of that is misguided.
Speaker 1: I think the ist was to bring back viewers that
Speaker 1: frankly no longer care about the NBA because why players
Speaker 1: don't care. There's nothing to be worried about in December,
Speaker 1: there's no meaning behind it. We don't know if they're
Speaker 1: going to compete, etc. Etc. Etc. And the casual fan
Speaker 1: interested in something other than the playoffs was that we
Speaker 1: want old fans, old curmudgeons like Ethan. Apparently they're not
Speaker 1: gonna watch, but I do think people who are in
Speaker 1: their fifties and sixties, they want to have something to
Speaker 1: circle their calendar about and they did. And casual fans
Speaker 1: want to have something to circle for their calendar, and
Speaker 1: they had that as well. And the ratings indicate that
Speaker 1: in this manner, the nd season tournament was a success.
Speaker 1: Old media guys that they're the new wave. They love
Speaker 1: to talk viewership numbers, save that for Barrett Sports Media.
Speaker 1: Strauss wrote, we're basing success on viewership because that was
Speaker 1: the whole point of the tournament, and that completely ignores
Speaker 1: the fact that the biggest NBA audience, people under forty,
Speaker 1: simply do not subscribe to cable. Ethan, and you know
Speaker 1: this man, he knows all this. I don't have to
Speaker 1: explain it to him. The ist by any metric, including viewership,
Speaker 1: is a success, was a success, and will be even
Speaker 1: more a success, despite what old men or middle aged
Speaker 1: men like Ethan yelling at clouds would like to