I also think that the disadvantage that basketball has is that the NBA (a national league) is pretty much the core or the central hub of basketball while not much else is going on elsewhere nationally. Sure we have the Euroleague and the Olympics are also interesting at times. It is a whole different story with football where, sure you have the core in Europe/S. America but you have good if not great national leagues throughout the world. In addition there are all these great international tournaments, CL, WC Continental Cups that millions if not billion people are regularly following. I think football just has a greater reach as a sport.
What I mean to say by that is: BB probably can't be directly compared to HT and therefore I don't think it should be such a big concern that BB is not able to reach these numbers.
IMO it comes down to modernizing the UI of the game and habe a complete mobile app, which could really have the potential of reeling in "standard gamers", who are not hardcore basketball fans. I believe that the outdated/old school look of the webpage scares quite a few people away, who are used to more modern standards, especially these from the younger generations. I have seen several people already mentioning in the forums that they used to play BB back in the day and now came back, because they knew there was an app. But as I said, this is just from my perspective and is in no way the truth
