Commissioner Adam Silver Said NBA is a Highlight League in Response to Rising Costs to Watch Games

Gone are the days of watching sports all in one convenient location. Sports has become more of an “a la carte” offering when it comes to broadcasting; being spread across multiple channels as well as streaming platforms. The National Basketball Association has followed this viewing model leaving some fans unable to watch their favorite team or players. When asked about this particular situation commissioner Adam Silver said that the NBA is a highlights league in response to rising costs to watch games.

Rachel Nichols of FOX Sports 1 was among the first to report on Silver’s remarks. She mentions,

“Adam Silver was asked about the rising cost to watch a season of NBA games as a fan of a particular team, considering all the games on either cable or streaming services. He said that there a bunch of games that will go on free, broadcast TV, and that fans can also consume the league in other ways besides watching games, noting that the NBA is a highlight league.”

Yes, a lot of people especially younger generations take in content via clips and highlights. However, the danger lies in the future. Will these future young adults have the same passion to buy sports packages as well as streaming services from only watching 10-60 second videos?

CBS Sports Sam Quinn believes the league may have a problem on its hands. Regarding the commissioner’s statement Quinn says,

“This is a red flag on so many levels.

The games are so much more than the highlights. This is like saying you only need to watch a movie’s trailer.

But more importantly, sports are supposed to be accessible. Entertainment for the masses. That’s very quickly and sadly changing.

If fewer and fewer fans can afford to watch the NBA, fewer and fewer kids are going to grow into adults who are eager to spend their (increasingly limited) disposable income supporting the NBA. The numbers shift in this direction every year. It’s an oncoming storm for the league.”

Commissioner Adam Silver Said NBA is a Highlight League in Response to Rising Costs to Watch Games

Nevertheless, what was really said? Now is time for you to form your own opinion. For background, a journalist at the press conference asked Adam, “It’s become very expensive to watch the NBA as a fan, not just going to games but also in order to — there’s different streaming services you have to subscribe to, some of the RSNs are expensive. I know that there are other points of entry for fans to interact with the NBA. There’s social media, and a lot of younger fans, that is how they’re experiencing the sport. But I wonder how much you think about that and how that will shape the next generation of fans?”

Here is a transcript of Silver’s response:

“I think about it a lot. I will say, I saw the story your publication ran. You took all the different streaming services and added them up and what those costs would be. I look at it a little bit differently, because most people can only consume so many games. By way of one example, in these new media deals, we’re going from essentially 15 exposures on broadcast television to 75. So to the extent someone wants to put little rabbit ears on their television, you can still get 75 marquee games in essence for free in the marketplace.

I’d say in addition to that, and this is an ongoing issue for the league, there’s a huge amount of our content that people essentially consume for free. This is very much a highlights-based sport, so Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, you name it, any service, the New York Times for that matter, to the extent that your content is not behind a paid firewall, there’s an enormous amount of content out there. YouTube, another example that is advertising based that consumers can consume.

I think this is a new world now of streaming media. I think we’re paying a lot of attention to that. It was one of the discussions we had with our media partners, not just the cost of the games — and I think most people are conditioned to paying a certain amount for high-value content — but also the discovery of those games.

Again, I’m a fan of many different sports. I think we’ve all had that experience where you’re going to Google to find the game you want to watch because the world has changed it’s not just automatically in the place you thought it would be.

But ultimately, I’ll talk about it in terms of reach and how you reach your consumers. It’s interesting — because of the disruption in the regional sports network business, I never would have predicted this was coming 10 years ago, but a lot of our local games are moving back to broadcast television. In fact, we have more games on broadcast television locally than we’ve had anytime in recent history.

We’re continuing to look at it. But the ultimate answer is we think a lot about it. We know where we have mass appeal. On a global basis, we’re literally reaching billions of people. We don’t want to disenfranchise people by working with partners that are creating price points that make it inaccessible to them.”

NBA Is a Highlights League—According to NBA Commissioner

The ease of watching sports is unfortunately long gone. Even the commissioner of basketball is having to Google to see where and how to watch a matchup. Let that sink in for a bit.

Nonetheless, this growing, frustrating experience for fans will either make or break some leagues in the future. Fans don’t have unlimited funds to purchase multiple streaming services, networks, packages for NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and more. Sports enthusiasts are being priced out and pushed out from enjoying sports content and entertainment. Therefore, how these leagues respond and tackle this problem will be a major factor of their survival and continued success.

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