In a recent edition of The Bill Simmons Podcast, the renowned sports personality voiced his belief that the National Basketball Association (NBA) is set to prioritize streaming services in its forthcoming TV deal.
Drawing on trends witnessed in the National Football League (NFL), Simmons predicts a significant shift towards live-streaming for the NBA’s broadcast strategy.
Bill Simmons says the NBA will have a major streaming component in their new TV deal. ⤵️https://t.co/XOOr2IfH1U
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) March 31, 2024
Rooted in recent developments in sports broadcasting, Simmons’ assumptions are not baseless.
Notably, the NFL has already started to experiment with streaming avenues, signing an exclusive deal with Amazon for Thursday Night Football and introducing the Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV.
“They’ve played it close to the vest, but I am pretty convinced that they’re going to go to a streamer in a way harder way than people realize. And it’s for some of the reasons that we’ve talked about on this podcast before,” Simmons said. “With the NFL, with the Amazon Thursday Night Football, with Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV and YouTube. And then the Peacock game they had.”
“The secret sauce with this is they got an incredible amount of intel on their audience, on audience behavior, how long people watch, where those people are watching from, what ads they like. It’s a whole other level,” he said. “So you compare it to having your games on CBS or TNT, or even like if they’re showing it on Max vs. showing it on Amazon or showing it on Google/YouTube. The amount of intelligence you get, you almost can’t put a price on. And for Adam Silver and the owners, like they know this. It would be irresponsible for them to at least not put a decent chunk of their games on one of these streamers. Because they’re not just getting this money from the streamer. They’re getting this relationship, they’re getting this advanced metrics on their audience, on viewerships, on how they should approach game presentation — just everything. There’s no way they’re not doing it.
“So I actually think the media deal is going to be a little bigger than has been reported. I think that anybody that’s gotten into the live sports stuff with football has been delighted by it. It’s been great. Even Apple doing the MLS, they’ve been delighted by that. So this is where it’s going and I think the NBA likes to be on the forefront, not on the backfront of this stuff. So the media deal’s going to be significant.”
Echoing movements within the NFL, the NBA dabbled in its first streaming exclusive playoff game earlier this year.
The league also announced the 2024 season opener airing on Peacock and even mentioned plans to broadcast as many as two games on Christmas Day exclusively through streaming.
The NBA’s transition to streaming is also motivated by the emergence of new tournaments that can draw in viewers.
The In-Season Tournament and the Play-In Tournament represent brand-new slots that the Association can sell off to interested buyers, bolstering their revenue and expanding coverage.
Turning theory into practice, the NBA already has significant interest from major streaming platforms for its new tournaments.
In particular, tech behemoth Apple is rumored to be a contender for acquiring streaming rights.
However, long-standing broadcaster Turner is reported to be “nervous” about the increased role that streaming platforms may have in broadcasting NBA games.
In Bill Simmons’ opinion, Turner seems to be falling behind in the rapidly evolving race for streaming service superiority.
“If I had to bet, I think it’s going to be bad for TNT. Because TNT is kind of the old school, past-tense way of doing this stuff. I know they’re trying to get in there in Max and they’re trying to belatedly do a bunch of stuff. They’re in that bundle with ESPN and Fox,” he said. “But you know — Amazon and Google/YouTube, it’s just a whole other animal for what they’re able to do. So we’ll see how it goes. But the point is, a lot of money’s coming.”
