The Revolution Is About Basketball

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver gave an interesting interview where he talked about how the league uses modern media. For instance, the NBA encourages people to post highlights to YouTube, unlike some other sports organizations. First of all, they have an agreement with YouTube that they still get ad revenue from these clips, even if the NBA itself didn't post the videos, and secondly, they understand that clips on the internet aren't really competing with the game itself.

That's a refreshing attitude, not just in pro sports but in all of business. Most corporations have a knee-jerk reaction to stop any-and-all unauthorized usage of their product. While I can understand why a company would want to guard their intellectual property, there often seems to be no thought of a greater strategy that goes into the decision to send out cease-and-desist orders.

But what I found really interesting is that they've used their streaming service to learn about fans' preferences. They can tell how much of the game people are watching, and when they're turning off the game. I guess that can lead to privacy concerns, but in the modern world, the NBA knowing when you stop watching is pretty small potatoes.

What I find interesting is that this data contributed to their decision to reduce the number of time-outs this season. On the one hand, I could have told them to do that and saved them a lot of trouble. But it also makes me wonder what other insights the NBA and other leagues could learn about what excites and annoys fans.

It's also notable that Silver mentions that they find it easier to increase viewership by encouraging existing fans to watch more, rather than winning over new people. I'd like to see this approach applied to hockey, where there doesn't seem to be much focus about whether the sport should appeal to hard-core fans or appeal to new audiences, and discussion of how to appeal to each usually involves a lot of guesswork and stereotypes. It would be good to see some more certainty, even though I fear that it might push the sport in directions that I, personally, wouldn't like.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go subscribe to the NBA streaming service. Next year I'm going to use it to watch every game, but I'm going to stop watching every time there's a bad call against the Raptors.