At the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) annual board of governors meeting, the New York Times’ Tania Ganguli asked the NBA’s commissioner, Adam Silver, about the rising costs of fandom.
To anyone who enjoys attending games, his response was deeply disappointing. “There’s a huge amount of our content that people can essentially consume for free. I mean, this is very much a highlights-based sport,” he told Ganguli.
Silver made his comments in the context of a massive eleven-year, $76 billion media rights deal set to come into effect this upcoming season. The deal expands the league’s number of partnerships — now including the likes of NBCUniversal and Amazon Prime Video — and spreads more games across multiple subscription services.
This move will make it hard for many to watch the teams they support. Already, local TV blackouts, which prevent certain regions from televising games, mean that fans in areas with restrictions often must pay twice as much as those without them. As commentator Joon Lee recently lamented: “For most of my life, sports was one of the most accessible forms of entertainment in America. You turned on the TV, flipped to the game and cheered or booed — with your family, your neighborhood, your city. Being a fan was simple. It was community.”
When it comes to fans, it seems clear the type of community Silver prefers is a gated one. The games are for the rich to watch and attend, and the rest of us should be happy with YouTube compilations.
Coinciding with the NBA’s shift to a viral clip highlight league has been its embrace of sports gambling, spearheaded by Silver. During the commissioner’s tenure, multiple gambling scandals involving players and officials have broken out — ironic, given Silver himself was instrumental in bringing sports betting into the mainstream. In 2014, he wrote an op-ed for the New York Times arguing in favor of the legalization of sports betting, the only…
Auteur: Jack Bedrosian
