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