League Circles wrote:If ESPN and TNT can't pay as much as they used to in an inflationary environment with an increasingly popular product (I assume), that's just proof that they aren't the right carrier for the product anymore. I don't really see why the NBA should sell to amazon or apple as opposed to just offer it themselves direct to consumer.
Fwiw, I like watching the Bears too, but the majority of their games can be watched OTA or on Amazon.
The full TV product isn't increasingly popular from what I can tell. TV is not increasingly popular. People are just ditching TV and people are not watching sports in general in greater numbers. The best thing about sports is that they were able to singlehandedly drive cable subscriptions, but they are starting to fail at that.
The amount of money that justified those ratings were the fact that people had to buy all this stuff they didn't want just for it, but that era is ending, because younger people aren't watching sports in the same way.
The NBA will probably have to figure out how to capitalize on money on Tic Tok or Instagram or whatever, because the audience is moving in other directions IMO. I'm not an expert in social media monetary value, but I'd guess monetizing that is where they need to make their bread in the future.
I use apple/amazon as examples because they are the carriers that have the money and profitability to pay which (to your point) is why I think they may be the right carriers. They may want the property not because of its direct profitability but for what it can do for them in a more holistic sense like ESPN / TNT may have felt like in the past when affiliate subscriptions had more value.
I could be wrong on that, but I'm not sure who the right carrier is if it isn't one of those guys.
Agree to your point theoretically on OTA for Bears games, but I don't know many people with OTAs. If CBS/FOX started streaming games on smart TV channels but were still freely available, I think that would be different.