
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver Sees D2C Play as a Key League Initiative By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Thursday, October 21, 2021 - 10:37 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver laid out a vision for league production and distribution at the SportsBusiness Journal's World Congress of Sports that will see the league engage with fans in new ways and, most importantly, on new devices and services.
Probably the biggest issue for us right now is we are a sport that's heavily on cable which has had enormous amount of disconnects over the last decade, he said. Something like 20 percent fewer homes receive cable, but it's much worse than that and is closer to something like 30% fewer viewers because many people are just using broadcast or cable connection to get broadband.
Part of that transition will also require a change in how events are produced as the goal will be to offer more personalization something that has been lacking to date due to the functionality limits on cable set-top boxes.
High definition has changed everything but other than that, it's still essentially a standard broadcast, says Silver. And part of the limitation was of course technology. It wasn't that the great broadcasters and distributors out there didn't want to change it, but they were locked in. And I think as we now move to more of a direct to consumer model what will come with that is personalization and customization.
Part of the urgency is because fans in the coveted 18-34 demo are especially disengaged from relying on a cable set-top box to get their content. Instead, they are leaning into streaming services.
You could argue that the bundle is just being recreated through these streaming services, he said. But putting that aside, I think at least for now, clearly the bundle is broken.
What is the solution? Silver said that as the NBA moves into the direct to consumer market, they would very much like to have their digital rights.
My long-term view is that we need to be in the direct to consumer business, he said. Exactly how it manifests itself I'm not sure and it may be that in certain cases we're part of multi-sport offerings. In other cases, it may be an NBA standalone [service] as we have now with our League Pass product.
It seems pretty clear that's the direction and I think that's what our fans are going to demand, says Silver. They want deeper, richer, more personalized content, and we have to respond to the market.
The great news for everybody, he added, is that people of all ages are devoting more time than ever to watching a screen.
They're watching streaming services and whatever they can watch on their phone, he said. We're a little bit caught in the switches right now and we'll work through that with our partners. And I think that where we end up will be a much better place. But we're going to have to work through that transition.
Helping in those personalization efforts will be the use of smartphones and other devices that offer new ways to tell stories.
We're learning how to produce events in a very different way, much less expensively, much more intimately, says Silver. What we'll see now in the sports industry is people rethinking how they can create some incredible content. In some cases, it's using iPhones or smartphones so intimacy can come through. There's a huge desire and demand for deeper content from our players and from the activities around the league. I think it's going to take us in a whole new place, especially as we move to more, to a direct to consumer relationship.
Silver also discussed sports gambling and its ability to also drive fan engagement. The biggest issue is that without federal oversight of sports gambling anyone looking to get serious about it on a national level quickly will find themselves dealing with dozens of entities.
Roughly 30 states have some form of legalized sports betting and if you are a content creator provider like we are you're dealing with 30 different jurisdictions which is a bit of a trap sometimes, he said. You can have somewhat of a race to the bottom where no jurisdiction wants to be overly restricted or too heavily regulated because then people go elsewhere. You see that a little bit in DC, we're its more regulated than in Virginia. So, I do think there should be national framework here. I don't think it's on the top of anybody's agenda in Congress right now, but I think we would be better off in a few years to legalize sports betting.
He points to how European soccer leagues which have made the transition from betting parlors to online gambling which offers safeguards against irregularities and corruption.
Online people have to identify themselves and they're using credit cards, he says. And just like with insider trading, computers are highly sophisticated and if they're detecting irregular activity the flags go off and they can tell leagues or other governing bodies. There's a lot of bad that could happen from this but, on balance, you can't turn the clock back. I think we're a lot better off with a regulated, transparent framework.
All of the efforts around personalization, gambling, and next-gen services are focused on one thing: making sure NBA fans are more connected than ever.
[All the leagues] need to focus on this in our own way but we really need to find ways to make sure that coming generations of fans aren't just fantasy fans or fans looking at highlights or what our players are doing off the court, he said. We want them to make an appointment to say there is a game on tonight at nine o'clock and I want to be part of that experience.
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
31/08/2025
Legrand | AV, a global specialist and industry leader in audiovisual solutions, returns to CEDIA Expo 2025, taking place Sept. 4-6 in Denver, with a powerful li...
31/08/2025
Global media technology company Backlight will unveil new capabilities in its Iconik, Wildmoka, and Zype product lines at IBC2025 (booth #1.D09), September 12 1...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...