The problem is population, not passion

The person who is the odds-on favorite to be the Los Angeles Lakers’ next coach once dinged the New Orleans Pelicans for having a small fan base.

“All 12 of u,” JJ Redick wrote on X in a back-and-forth with a Pelicans fan. 

Over the past five years, I have attended every Pelicans home game except for one (the flu caused me to miss a December 2019 date against the Orlando Magic, which came near the end of a 13-game losing streak). My observation is that the size of the Pelicans’ fan base has more to do with population than passion. 

Earlier this month, I was able to get ahold of Nielsen data, which showed how viewership of Pelicans games fared in the New Orleans Designated Market Area (DMA) on six different TV stations this past season.

• WVUE (seven games): 46,057 TV households, 6.9 rating

• Bounce (three games): 18,400 TV households, 2.7 rating

• Bally (69 games): 12,807 TV households, 1.9 rating

• TNT (four games): 28,939 TV households, 4.3 rating

• ESPN (three games): 18,185 TV households, 2.7 rating

• ABC (one game): 30,749 TV households, 4.6 rating

The Pelicans averaged a 1.9 rating on Bally Sports New Orleans. That amounted to 12,807 TV households tuning in. That is a small raw number, but proportionally, there was nothing abnormal about viewership of Pelicans games compared to other NBA teams. 

Two years ago, Sports Business Journal published a list of how 27 NBA teams rated in their local markets. Only eight of the 27 teams averaged a 2.0 rating or higher. At that point in time, a 1.9 rating would have been the 10th-best rating among the 27 teams. 

New Orleans is the 50th-biggest media market in the United States. There are 687,100 TV homes in the New Orleans DMA. Comparatively, Dallas-Fort Worth (the No. 5 media market) has more than 3 million TV households, and San Antonio (the No. 31 media market) has more than 1 million TV households. That means the same 1.9 rating that equates to 12,807 TV households in New Orleans amounts to 57,789 TV households in Dallas-Fort Worth and 20,131 TV households in San Antonio. 

While Dallas-Fort Worth and San Antonio continue to grow, New Orleans is getting smaller. From 2020 to 2023, the New Orleans metro area population shrank by 4.3%. In that same time, Louisiana experienced a population decline of 84,000 people. That leakage means the Pelicans can’t depend on an influx of people to fill their building and watch their games.

The most effective way to grow the size of the Pelicans’ fan base is obvious: win. Since the NBA relocated to Louisiana in 2002, New Orleans has only posted consecutive winning seasons twice. Chris Paul’s Hornets did it in the 2007-08 and 2008-09 seasons. The Pelicans did it in their two most recent seasons. Making a postseason run with Zion Williamson on the floor would go a long way toward activating casuals. 

Another way to grow the fan base is to make it easier to watch the Pelicans play. The seven games the Pelicans showed over the air on WVUE TV-Fox 8 last season averaged a 6.9 rating — what amounted to 46,057 TV households tuning in.

I would love to see the Pelicans fan base grow. My motives are mostly selfish: It would be good for subscriptions and downloads. I also believe more communal experiences are healthy in the niche-driven world we inhabit.

I don’t think Louisiana’s problem is that it lacks passion for its NBA team. The problem is that this is not a populous state, and that significant friction exists to watching a team which has won one playoff series in the past decade play on TV.