Post by brasilbear on May 6, 2018 10:16:55 GMT -6
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Read the whole thing, it points out in comparison why the NBA seems to 'get it' against the NFL. Silver >>> Goodell but its also a league wide effort to view every decision with the fans in mind. The understand that fan engagement means more interest which means more revenue, and it cycles back onto more fans.
Select paragraphs:
In an age of cord cutting, constant distraction, and rapidly changing media and sports habits, professional basketball has bucked many trends. Television ratings are up by double digits so far this season, and attendance has set records for four years straight. Relations with the players’ union are relatively placid. NBA players compete with global soccer stars for the largest social media followings. The league has encouraged players such as LeBron James and Steph Curry when they assume vocal roles in politics, culture, and social action. Deep-pocketed owners, many of them business titans in their own right, have been pushing prices for franchises ever higher. The Houston Rockets sold in 2017 for US$2.2 billion, and the Brooklyn Nets recently sold 50 percent of the team at a valuation of US$2.3 billion. The quality of play sets the global standard.
The NBA also occupies a unique and growing role in the entertainment and media world. Beyond being one of the biggest providers of sports programming, it has expanded its lines of business into adjacent areas: the WNBA; the NBA G League, a developmental league; the NBA 2K League, an e-sports league based on the NBA’s video game NBA 2K; NBA League Pass, a popular video streaming service of live games; and a host of experiments with leading technology platforms including Facebook, YouTube, and Tencent.
S+B: Your television ratings are also up, which is sort of against the trend, and your audience really isn’t aging as much as that of other sports. What do you attribute that to?
SILVER: I attribute it to the fact that our players, because they are young people themselves, are so highly attuned to other young people and to popular culture. There have been times in this league when it’s worked to our disadvantage. But we’ve caught a wave. The players enjoy being the multidimensional people they are on social media and demonstrating to the public and to their fans that they are more than just basketball players, that they have points of view about what’s happening politically, that they have particular fashion tastes and music tastes.
S+B: It also seems that the NBA has a less contentious relationship with players and encourages them to be engaged in social media in a way that other sports might not.
SILVER: In this league we recognize that the players are the stars, and we treat them as our partners. The fact that the league has their backs when they put themselves out there doesn’t necessarily mean we agree with everything they say. But we want them to know that political speech is protected in this league.
S+B: Another potential revenue stream is participation in legalized betting. How does that fit into your thinking about growing engagement around the sport, and growing revenue for owners and players?
SILVER: Before being deputy commissioner and then commissioner, I was president of NBA Entertainment, and I spent a lot of my time traveling outside the United States and selling programming for the NBA. I quickly saw that outside the United States, legalized sports betting is a way of life. Take the Premier League [English soccer], for example. There were betting parlors in London, and there were betting windows at the stadiums in the middle of the games. Now almost all of that betting action is online. In the U.S., the estimates range from $100 billion to $400 billion in illegal sports betting annually. It became clear to me that we would be better off with a regulated framework of sports betting, rather than having it all be illegal and unmonitored. And the intellectual property creators like the NBA, which invest billions of dollars per year creating their product [$7.5 billion in 2018 alone], should share in the proceeds. Legalized sports betting creates an opportunity to be compensated directly by selling our video and data.
Read the whole thing, it points out in comparison why the NBA seems to 'get it' against the NFL. Silver >>> Goodell but its also a league wide effort to view every decision with the fans in mind. The understand that fan engagement means more interest which means more revenue, and it cycles back onto more fans.
Select paragraphs:
In an age of cord cutting, constant distraction, and rapidly changing media and sports habits, professional basketball has bucked many trends. Television ratings are up by double digits so far this season, and attendance has set records for four years straight. Relations with the players’ union are relatively placid. NBA players compete with global soccer stars for the largest social media followings. The league has encouraged players such as LeBron James and Steph Curry when they assume vocal roles in politics, culture, and social action. Deep-pocketed owners, many of them business titans in their own right, have been pushing prices for franchises ever higher. The Houston Rockets sold in 2017 for US$2.2 billion, and the Brooklyn Nets recently sold 50 percent of the team at a valuation of US$2.3 billion. The quality of play sets the global standard.
The NBA also occupies a unique and growing role in the entertainment and media world. Beyond being one of the biggest providers of sports programming, it has expanded its lines of business into adjacent areas: the WNBA; the NBA G League, a developmental league; the NBA 2K League, an e-sports league based on the NBA’s video game NBA 2K; NBA League Pass, a popular video streaming service of live games; and a host of experiments with leading technology platforms including Facebook, YouTube, and Tencent.
S+B: Your television ratings are also up, which is sort of against the trend, and your audience really isn’t aging as much as that of other sports. What do you attribute that to?
SILVER: I attribute it to the fact that our players, because they are young people themselves, are so highly attuned to other young people and to popular culture. There have been times in this league when it’s worked to our disadvantage. But we’ve caught a wave. The players enjoy being the multidimensional people they are on social media and demonstrating to the public and to their fans that they are more than just basketball players, that they have points of view about what’s happening politically, that they have particular fashion tastes and music tastes.
S+B: It also seems that the NBA has a less contentious relationship with players and encourages them to be engaged in social media in a way that other sports might not.
SILVER: In this league we recognize that the players are the stars, and we treat them as our partners. The fact that the league has their backs when they put themselves out there doesn’t necessarily mean we agree with everything they say. But we want them to know that political speech is protected in this league.
S+B: Another potential revenue stream is participation in legalized betting. How does that fit into your thinking about growing engagement around the sport, and growing revenue for owners and players?
SILVER: Before being deputy commissioner and then commissioner, I was president of NBA Entertainment, and I spent a lot of my time traveling outside the United States and selling programming for the NBA. I quickly saw that outside the United States, legalized sports betting is a way of life. Take the Premier League [English soccer], for example. There were betting parlors in London, and there were betting windows at the stadiums in the middle of the games. Now almost all of that betting action is online. In the U.S., the estimates range from $100 billion to $400 billion in illegal sports betting annually. It became clear to me that we would be better off with a regulated framework of sports betting, rather than having it all be illegal and unmonitored. And the intellectual property creators like the NBA, which invest billions of dollars per year creating their product [$7.5 billion in 2018 alone], should share in the proceeds. Legalized sports betting creates an opportunity to be compensated directly by selling our video and data.
