The answer is incredibly simple: eliminate the max contract. Raptors can go over the tax to re-sign their player. Will Kawhi turn down $50MM for 32 with lakers/clippers? AD never goes to LA and Lebron probably plays his whole career in Cleveland. Everyone talks about the money these stars are leaving on the table but they're really not leaving as much as it sounds like per year. They're mostly leaving the 5th year on the table but a superstar will just get another big contract later anyway
Reading this thread is fascinating, because a large percentage of people here are put off by this mercenary era of the NBA. I would be confident in betting that the same sentiment is prevalent in all the cities that are not "chosen" by the NBA pantheon. This does not bode well for the NBA. I expect ratings to go up a small amount for early nationally televised games involving newly formed teams, but there will be a continued drop off in local broadcasts. NBA finals ratings will likely be worse than expected as well.
Fair, but once you sign a contract (Paul George) you should have to see it through, bar a trade. They get paid too well to hold out.
No offense, but this assumes only one meaning of slavery. The term is used in the modern world in all sorts of different ways - for example, in Wage Slavery, people can absolutely quit their work. NCAA Sports' treatment of players is often referred to as a modern form of slavery (I would disagree, but it's a commonly used analogy). Both of these do not fit your definition. At the end of the day, the person I was responding to suggested that owners simply take control of the players and unilaterally decide on the rules and work conditions. In reality, there is a union and all of these things are mutually agreed on. As I said, players rightfully have a say because this is not slavery.
This is what everyone who's angry at the NBA says every year - and yet, their revenues keep skyrocketing and the cap keeps rising, and both the players and owners keep making more and more money.
Their revenue shot up because of overpaid TV deals. Ratings have not gone up whatsoever - in fact they have been dropping. This TV deal ends in 2024-25. We will see what their next deal brings in. I would bet a significant amount of my own money that it will be substantially lower.
If OKC felt like they wanted to keep him, George would have played for them. They just ultimately didn't want an unhappy player and were able to extract a fortune for him. George asked for a trade - if OKC didn't comply, he wasn't just going to sit out for the next 4 years. He really had no leverage except to ask. It's different when there's a year left on their contracts and the team can get nothing for the player, so the teams are motivated to move them. But even then, the player's only leverage is that the team doesn't want the contract to simply end as scheduled (contract expires, player leaves) - they instead want to get something extra from it. For example, with Anthony Davis, his only leverage was that he told NO he wasn't going to stay after his deal ended. In Chris Paul's case, his leverage was that he had a player opt out and told the Clippers he wasn't staying long-term. Those are perfectly reasonable things to do. The trades happened because the teams wanted to get something of value in return. The only way it's bad is if the expectation is that the player should either be forced to stay with their team, or shouldn't tell their team they are planning to leave. But in none of these cases (as far as I know) has a player threatened to not play or honor their contracts (unlike the NFL, for example, where players hold out). (EDIT: Kawhi may have been an exception there. Not sure what would have happened if San Antonio just kept him last year)
Ratings for all TV has been dropping because of Netflix, etc - that's true of all the sports leagues and regular TV shows. The price of ads for live sports has been skyrocketing though, because it's one of the few things that isn't commonly DVRed where you largely skip the ads. There's no evidence that the next TV deal will be any smaller.
The streaming effect is largely on cable networks, as cord cutting has been destroying that entire industry. However, there should be a much smaller effect for national networks like ABC, which is where the Finals and many late season games are broadcast. The ABC numbers clearly show that the ratings are anemic at best. These recent Finals have had the worst ratings in over a decade. The numbers for regular season broadcasts were equally disappointing. Furthermore, ESPN was the biggest contributor to the new large TV deals. I haven't see the evidence for price of ads skyrocketing, but even if this was true, their financials have shown that they are going to lose money in 2021 if not already - depending on the rate of subscriber loss. Therefore, the price of ads isn't making up for loss of paying subscribers even if it is at all time highs. Therefore, if ESPN is in the red, then there's no way it can shell out another 24 billion to the NBA for a product that isnt' generating the kind of ratings it needs to maintain its current business model.
Then you go back to the 1990's NBA contract structure, which everyone complained about then too because a handful of superstars were leveraging their power and eating up huge amounts of cap space, pissing off both the owners who had to pay these huge deals, and the rest of the players who got less money as a result.
No, it affects ALL TV: https://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/traditional-tv-still-sinking-in-stream-of-digital-video Outside of a blip upwards during 2010-2013, NBA total viewership is about the same as 10 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Basketball_Association_on_television Higher US population, lower general TV watching and ratings for all events yields about the same net audience. Yes, because one team was in Canada, which had a whole nation watching it but doesn't count towards US ratings. ESPN being in the red as a whole doesn't necessarily mean ESPN is in the red for the NBA. But that said, the NBA's TV Deals also get balanced out by growing viewership in other areas. As traditional viewership decreases, they make up for it with new services and new features - for example, the latest TV deal included rights to many more national games, summer games and other shows, etc. Just look at what a spectacle they've made of the past few weeks with free agency.
Don't forget about the international money. The NBA is hugely popular in Asia and Europe. The more money that comes from overseas, the less the league cares about parity. Sports are an international entertainment product, like Netflix.
Imagine having signed CP3 to a 6 year contract, oh my It won't happen, we're going to see more flexibility, out clauses and such in the future. Funny how players used to have no-trade clauses so they could block any trade, now we actually need teams to have a no-trade clause option. The current NBA landscape is definitely devastating for small markets in the long run, but one radical solution they might have to look at is less NBA teams. I do think Milwaukee , OKC, Toronto among others have shown that with a good FO and strategy you can develop your young player(s) and have success. All these teams do not win without home grown talent and young talent they picked up.
I certainly agree that streaming is the growing trend, but this data doesn't prove anything about live sporting events on national broadcasts. The point stated here is that "the number of traditional cable homes fell to 76.4% from 80.4%, but was supplemented by the growth of virtual MVPDs such as Sling TV and YouTubeTV." It further states that the demographic of 18-32 utilized their smartphones and mobile devices for consumption of media, which I agree with. The data point that I would like to see is how many viewers are using streaming services specifically for nationally broadcast games. Because my contention is that while people are watching more programming on streaming services, I don't believe many are using it for live sporting events (which you state is a different animal altogether) on non-cable networks like ABC. In fact, another article reports that there is a large resurgence of over the air/antenna (ABC, etc) only households in the US. This means that more individuals are ONLY having access to national broadcasts for the NBA, yet are not utilizing it to increasing degrees. https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/15/n...over-the-air-a-48-increase-over-past-8-years/ This actually proves the point that the recent increases in NBA revenue is driven by inflated TV deals and not by any organic growth in interest in the game. The NBA dropped off significantly after the MJ era, and hasn't been able to recover since. You would expect that with superstars and superteams like Lebron and the Warriors, you would see significantly increased interest but that isn't the case. If we use Finals ratings as a marker, the trend shows ratings that haven't really grown since the 70s. Rights to more games or shows don't matter if you can't directly monetize it. The only question for the TV deals is whether or not ESPN will continue to hemorrhage subscribers, which if so, they will be financially unable to shell out another large sum for broadcasting rights. They can make the biggest spectacle ever seen in TV history, but if they cannot balance the budget in terms of money in from advertisements/subscribers and money out to the NBA/NFL, then the future is bleak for them - and the NBA as a result. I have seen the arguments that ESPN or the NBA are suddenly going to generate new large revenue streams or industries, but I find this unlikely. The truth of the matter is that the NBA has been living on TV deals from ESPN, which takes a disproportionate amount of cable dollars. Now that this paradigm is ending, I find it hard to believe that the NBA won't suffer as a result.
I would like to see data for money from China/Europe. I may be wrong but my impression was that NBA revenue is largely domestic.
Players just realize fans, teams and city don't really care about them, which us why there is no loyalty.
I see future streaming taken over the cord cutters, but streaming cost going up as well. Already you are you're seeing streaming starting to decentralized and new options come up (I have Hulu, HBO and Netflix). Instead of $7 a month going to ESPN from the cable company, $7 going directly to ESPN+ from the customer. Cable company (since the end of net neutrality) will then charge premium for streaming bandwidth and etc. The money will be there and NBA will get their cut. Corporations are not going to stop trying to grow profits and the desire for entertainment and expendable income isn't going away. The pie is shifting but the pie is there.
We will see if the NBA will keep their cut. It’s far from a foregone conclusion. Industries have been built and destroyed by new technology. While the NBA certainly won’t die, it may not emerge from the new media paradigm unscathed.
https://subredditstats.com/r/Nba To add, look at subscriber and comment growth of r/NBA. You can't tell me interest isn't there, it's accessed differently.
