As fans have begun moving away from cable TV to streaming services, the NBA has been trying to keep up. In recent seasons, the options outside of cable included NBA League Pass (if you’re outside your team’s market) and streaming services for any local or national channels that games may be on. Sometimes, fans were out of luck if games were on some random local channel or blocked by blackouts, but for the most part it was manageable to consume most games.
However, beginning this upcoming season, the
NBA is expanding its reach even more, to the point that it has possibly gone too far. With NBC returning to the NBA broadcasting world (and TNT out), games will now also be streamed on Peacock, so that’s yet another streaming service fans will have to pay for to catch some games. Amazon Prime has also been added to the streaming mix, which, while more people may have it, still adds to the ever-increasing lists of different apps needed by fans who want to watch as many games as possible.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver was asked about fans’ concern over the rising cost of watching the NBA in a press conference following a governors meeting yesterday, and let’s just say he did not exactly handle it they way a you would expect a commissioner who needs viewers would.
“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. 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.”
Masked behind his friendly, humble voice, he essentially tells fans who can’t afford all these streaming services to get on social media and watch highlights. It pulls back the mask of a nice man who has tried to appear as more “for the people” than his predecessor, David Stern, ever was. Instead, Silver comes across as no better here. Where as he should be trying to bring in as many viewers as possible, especially as the cost to attend games rise, he’s potentially alienating some, basically saying it’s your own problem if you can’t afford 5-10 different streaming services.
While this was the part of his response that went viral and likely did not come out the way he wanted, he did go on to say he hears the concerns and will continue to work with providers to address high streaming costs, and that they don’t want to disenfranchise fans. You can see the entire question and response here. If he could go back and answer again, he’d probably just leave out that one part. I also believe this is partially a result of him having a different view than many fans; he sees watching games from a league-wide perspective, as in there’s always “something” out there to watch, but he’s not necessarily thinking about fans who just want to watch their own team.
I admit I’m a not someone who is impacted by this issue. I still have cable, plus I pay for League Pass to watch the Spurs since I live in Houston, so I have easy access to every Spurs game, be it locally or nationally televised. (Even if I have to watch the Rockets’ broadcast four times per season. Yuck.) But I completely understand what a challenge this is, especially for fans who are in the San Antonio market but don’t have cable. League Pass is blacked out, so you need potentially six different streaming services to get all the games, and not always ones you’d use for much else (usually FanDuel, KENS 5 and CW for local broadcasts, plus ESPN and now Peacock and Amazon for nationally televised games).
No one is here to say Silver is a bad commissioner and out of touch with the average fan, but this was not a great moment for him and has gone viral for all the wrong reasons. We’ll see if he re-address the issue, but in the meantime, hopefully Spurs fans will be able to watch as many games as possible without much issue this season. Things are looking brighter than they have in years, and it should be a season worth watching the entire game, not just highlights.
