2023 to 2024 NBA Season - After The In-Season Tournament

Record-setting attendance in the completed regular season

Note this is a good article, but the site has so much annoying auto-play video that it is best viewed on any device that is not a phone

@Paolo_X - So i am wondering if ESPN is going to have the money for the NBA rights fees - as those numbers are going to triple. ESPN is shedding customers by the millions - how can they pay 3x the money for the NBA and not bleed out? My theory for the moment is that ESPN let’s the NBA go and then they stay pot comitted to the UFL as a spring sport - cheap, reasonable ratings and a good filler. Fox isn’t going to go all in on the NBA - so for them the UFL is a solid property for OTA broadcasts. The crowds are weak but the TV numbers are not terrible.

That said I think the UFL needs two or 4 more teams - and this is so that you have solid matchups every week and you can bury the “dogs” on FS1 or for that local market only. I realize that no fans in the stands - but from an inventory standpoint the CFL has had this issue for decades with only 4 games a week - sometimes you just have a slate of “dogs” without more inventory.

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@Paolo_X - Paolo is happy LeBron is toast and heading to a vacation.

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No doubt. Heavy gravy are all the social media haters of Jokic who are sometimes in the Lebron camp, who will never get enough whine for all their cheese.

Those YouTube channels might pop up on your feed if you follow a lot of sports on YouTube. They can EAT IT too like most of the independent fan boy channels.

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TNT has had the best format and presentation for a studio show for decades now.

I don’t watch hardly, but when I do, I have often enjoyed these guys and always have loathed ESPN’s studio coverage for just about any sport.

It was not the first such studio show to have four people at it, but this particular format has inspired the banter on other shows.

I remember when Charles Barkley was set to move on with other career plans decades ago, but in one of his best decisions ever, he chose to stay on there in Atlanta and the rest is history.

As Rich Eisen commented via his show via Roku, soak it up, for what we are seeing is looking like it will be gone if TNT loses the rights to the NBA.

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Yeah I don’t think that WB/HBO/TNT is going to pony up 3x the money for the NBA. I would expect one of the streaming giants to shell out the cash for the NBA.

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Yes, the lead horse is Amazon.

Now they do a great job with the NFL, but that does not mean they can do it for the NBA.

It will be interesting how the whole television landscape lines up too with regards to the remaining Regional Sports Networks as well.

Sadly for the average viewer, the landscape might be as complex as that of MLB.

Then we have to wonder what the NHL will also do in the next round to look beyond ESPN and TNT.

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The NHL is a league that makes most of its money from attendance. I think that the NHL gets $400 million annually from the TV deal. That deal isn’t up until like the end of the 2028 season or something like that. Which is an eternity from now. The UFL might be dead and gone by then or it might be at 14 teams and drawing 1.5 million per game - at which point it becomes a pretty strong negotiating chip that Fox and ESPN can use.

I am with @Paolo_X in that we are in the wild wild west for sports broadcasting. This is definitely not 205 through 2018 where there was stability and you could forecast out ten years. Today good luck forecasting out 2 or 4 years.

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It appears there is one last stand being made by WBD’s TNT so as to secure the new contract for media rights to the NBA:

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This is interesting or not. Put it into the rumour stash.

Oh well. For the average viewer, this is the worst of all worlds. At least there will be one more season as things stand now.

And maybe Lebron is finally gone after next season, including from his overreaching media influence for coverage of the NBA via his talent agency Klutch Sports (i.e. Shannon Sharpe, Nick Wright, et cetera) for quite some time as Stephen A. Smith and others have called out.

I want to see what happens when Lebron Retires - I think a lot of payback is going to be heading to Klutch sports. I am sure there are owners and GM’s that have some payback they are waiting to dish out to Klutch once lebron is gone.

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I have not been watching, but look who is watching more and more - a younger audience as well as who is winning more games - also YOUNGER players who are the future of the NBA.

The league appears to have moved on already from Lebron James after the whistle has blown. Maybe he’ll be around for one more season, and he’ll probably make an announcement and then make it all about him as usual for Lebron’s approach off the court.

There’s also the looming issue of “matching rights” between the two incumbents and outside bidders. WBD CEO David Zaslav has said his company has the right to match any third-party offers the league receives. But WBD hasn’t had to match any offers yet—because there are no official offers, sources said. That means NBC and Amazon are close but haven’t sealed their deals.

As much as I want TNT to continue with some rights package, when I read the following, it reminded me of what happened to Comcast when they lost the NHL rights.

Yes, TNT parent Warner Bros. Discovery is faced with the unenviable position of having to pay more money for worse NBA rights than it already has, especially if NBC parent Comcast is serious about paying $2.5 billion a year, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. That would be double the $1.2 billion annually paid by WBD.

Businesses scoff at paying more for less, and that goes to the extreme I figure in media and entertainment.

And then by late 2019 when in retrospect it was clear that Comcast was not going to retain the rights to the NHL, their production and coverage of the rest of the 2019 to 2020 season and then the 2020 to 2021 NHL season (delayed and shortened due to pandemic) went right into the toilet like all things Comcast any more.

I don’t see WBD CEO Zaslav magically changing fundamental business thinking here to make an exception, including even for this very special TNT production.

I would hope to be wrong, but when it appears that it looks like a business miracle is what it would take for progress or salvation, I know better than to ever count on one.

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This has predictive programming written ALL over it:

Meanwhile on this front of predictive programming as well, wow it looks like the knives are already out at TNT even before the official announcement and as TNT retains the rights through next season in 2025 anyway:

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This is a great article days before it is likely that the new media rights for the NBA are announced for after the 2024 to 2025 season.

Here are some of the basic facts that explain why the NBA is shifting strategy and still able to command more for the rights.

TV viewership for the 2023–24 regular season inched up 1% to 1.09 million viewers for games on ABC, ESPN, TNT, and NBA TV, according to Sports Media Watch. But viewership across the NBA’s three main TV partners (ABC, ESPN, and TNT) dropped 1% to 1.56 million, the lowest in three years. In ’23, All-Star Game viewership plunged to a record-low 4.6 million viewers. While the audience rose 14% to 5.5 million this year, even Silver has worried the game is broken.

Knowing the NBA needed more tentpole events to shop to possible partners, he launched the inaugural In-Season Tournament this season. Group-stage games on ESPN and TNT averaged 1.5 million viewers. That was up 26% from comparable TV windows the season before. During current negotiations, the NBA has dangled the in-season event as a stand-alone property and a sweetener.

Of course more broadly speaking as we covered quite extensively in the streaming thread, live sports remain king for ratings, as otherwise there appears to be a larger void of quality original content on both television and streaming platforms.

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Charles Barkley better fire up his production company for the new show I figure, as believes Pat McAfee who would of course know himself.

Charles is also angry that he just found out the CNN, also owned by WBD, already canceled what was otherwise a terrible idea for a show with Gayle King even though it was only a short run.

Of course CNN has been steaming hot diarrhoea since at least 2018, and they only managed some ratings via of course the popular Trump-bashing like on many media.

I’ve enjoyed Charles Barkley on TV for years, but I don’t see or agree that he has appeal beyond a sports desk, such as already as we see with that type of show or if he were to try to be a game show host and so on.

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Not a basketball fan but one of the greatest and most unique athletes in the history of sports just passed. I remember watching him when I was a kid which is when I used to watch basketball.

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There has been some fixation of late on merely the consequences within a league and the sport with regards to betting on the league or sport by players.

Well, here’s an example when a case goes into criminal conduct, which still more often than not has a hand in players betting on games or in the recent MLB case, even when a player’s likeness was used without his knowledge to bet on games.

Many players betting on their own league or sport, and knowingly with an inside edge over the general public by virtue of being in a league, against the rules don’t simply stop there of course.

They enlist others to help them who often have criminal motives or a criminal history.

So here’s the position taken now on this case by also the FBI.

Good luck to any player telling a judge via his attorney that he didn’t know the guy and the like excuses after otherwise knowingly violating the rules even if he didn’t know all the rules or see them posted clearly on a sign read aloud to him as well and all that nonsense.

We’ll see in time, as long as these investigations can take of course, how real betting on your own sport or league can get for others.