Mark Cuban: NBA 'dominates' NFL on social media

Football remains king of television viewership in the United States, but Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban believes the NBA has the NFL beat when it comes to social media popularity.

Cuban downplayed the NFL's television dominance during an appearance on the "All the Smoke" podcast with Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, saying that TV viewers tend to skew older.

"Now we have to realize that teenagers are getting all their NBA from social media," Cuban explained. "And when I'm talking at board of governors meetings, I'm like, 'That's where we got to go get the money because TikTok and YouTube and Instagram, they're killing it off of us.'

"I was talking to someone, like, 'Well why does the NFL kill you on television?' Because television viewers are older, right?" he continued. "The average age, you know, is 65, 70, 75 now and those people are not on social media. Whereas the NBA dominates the NFL more on social media than the NFL dominates us on television, right? And so that means we've gotta stay closer to kids on social to really keep them connected to us. And that's a lot more work and it changes all the time."

As of July, the NFL had 23 of the top 25 most-watched sporting events of 2023, according to Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch. Super Bowl LVII drew the biggest audience this year with 114.21 viewers, followed by the AFC Championship Game (53.12 million viewers) and the NFC Championship Game (47.50 million viewers).

The most-watched NBA game of the year thus far was Game 5 of the Finals, which drew 13.08 million viewers.

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