Sports Media Watch presents thoughts on recent events in the industry, starting with the shift away from local broadcasting by the major sports leagues.
This coming week marks the end of an era in the NBA on television, and it is not the end of the NBA on TNT (that comes in about a month). Thursday at the earliest or Sunday at the latest, this week will mark the final time that local broadcast partners will be able to televise NBA playoff games. Under the league’s new media rights deal that begins next season, all playoff games are the exclusive property of national television.
In the current deal, local broadcasters are allowed to air opening round games so long as they are not carried nationally by ABC. Most of those air side-by-side (or ‘co-exist’) with national broadcasts on TNT and ESPN, but some air exclusively in-market (if the national coverage airs on NBA TV). RSNs have steadily been crowded out of the postseason by the league’s national TV partners, whose increasingly lucrative deals have required increasing exclusivity. The first round was the last bit of playoff inventory available to local broadcasters, who are already losing considerable regular season inventory in the new deal as well.
For the national networks, the exclusivity is a long time coming. While TNT and ESPN have full exclusivity from the second round onward, ‘co-exists’ obviously limit their ability to maximize their audience for an entire round of playoffs. Once that changes, ESPN and the NBA’s two new streaming partners — Peacock and Amazon Prime Video — will reap the benefits, even if that only means a few hundred thousand viewers at the margins.
For Peacock and Prime, full exclusivity is something even the NFL has not offered. Both streamers have carried an ‘exclusive’ NFL playoff game, but their broadcasts were simulcast on over-the-air affiliates in the home markets in accordance with long-standing NFL policy. The NBA may not be able to offer an audience anywhere close to the size of an NFL game, but it is offering true exclusivity, leaving local fans no option but to sign up if they want to watch their team.
That may seem like a disservice to the fans, who generally prefer local broadcasts — whether due to perceptions of national bias or simply a comfort with familiar voices. But instability in the RSN industry has already made it difficult for fans in many markets to watch their teams play. Given the relatively low price of Peacock (for now still under the $10 mark), and the fact that a great many people already have Amazon Prime, it may actually be easier to watch a hypothetical Nuggets, Pistons or Bulls playoff game on national TV next season than it would have been on Altitude, FanDuel Sports Network or CHSN. (The same does not hold for fans of teams who use the ‘beam and stream’ model of games on broadcast television and streaming, such as the NBA Suns or NHL Golden Knights.)
For local broadcasters, the change is just one more step toward the brink. They will still have first round Stanley Cup playoff games — at least for now — but in relatively short order that could change. Another NHL media rights deal will be negotiated in the next few years, and already there is at least one voice in the league calling for full national exclusivity in the postseason.
As national media rights revenue continues to grow and its local counterpart continues to shrink, it only makes sense that leagues are shifting in the direction of the former. The NBA is joining Major League Baseball in distributing its postseason exclusively through national television, and the commissioners of both leagues — Adam Silver and Rob Manfred, as anyone reading this surely knows — have publicly floated centralized distribution of local games via national streaming platforms. Silver went as far as to describe teams as being “trapped” on cable at an event last week.
While such plans are bound to run into roadblocks, considering they would require wresting local rights away from high-revenue teams with their own RSNs like the Dodgers, Lakers, Yankees and Knicks, even partially successful implementation would further erode the RSN business.
As it is, the new NBA media rights deal by itself threatens the future of the RSN model, Knicks owner James Dolan argued in a letter to the league last year. As reported by ESPN at the time, Dolan noted that the “increased number of exclusive and non-exclusive games” in the new deal would give national rightsholders ESPN/ABC, NBC/Peacock and Prime Video “the ability to air nearly half of the regular season and all postseason games,” reducing RSN inventory to a point that “risks rendering the entire RSN model unviable.”
As owner of one of the more successful RSNs, MSG Network, Dolan is not an entirely objective observer. It may be the case that outside of MSG, YES and more, the RSN model is already unviable — and the new deals may simply be dealing with reality. Far from throwing the RSNs a life preserver, the leagues are full speed ahead in the other direction.
Yet a word of caution. The leagues may have big ideas for a future of consolidated local rights, available to stream through an Amazon Prime or a YouTube, but decentralized local broadcasts are still the status quo and an important part of sports television — particularly in baseball, but also in the NBA and NHL. Ratings and revenue may be down, but they are not nonexistent. Shifting away from the traditional local model may be a necessity, but unless and until an alternative is up and running, it would be wise not to go too far in further devaluing these platforms.
Plus: Anthony Edwards, NBA style of play, Mel Kiper Jr.
The ‘face of the NBA’ discussion is an easy way to stir people up, but that is not the intention here. It seems apparent that despite his protestations, Minnesota Timberwolves G Anthony Edwards is as good a candidate for the position as any. To begin with, consider the current faces of the NBA: LeBron James, Stephen Curry, and to a lesser extent Kevin Durant. Edwards defeated Durant in the first round last year, is poised to defeat James in the first round this year, and if so could face Curry in a second round series that would start next week.
In the event that Edwards defeats all three en route to consecutive conference finals, the ‘face of the league’ crown would seem to be in sight. His combination of charisma and spectacular play, plus a record of postseason achievement, would at least qualify him as the face of the next generation — if he is so inclined. It was Edwards at midseason who said he did not want to be the face of the league, instead ceding that status to Victor Wembanyama. With sufficient postseason success, he may not have a choice in the matter.
As it is, the league needs one of its younger stars to break through onto the national scene, as even relatively recent stars like Damian Lillard — who tore his Achilles on Sunday — seem to be heading toward the end of their careers.
After a long season of grousing about the ‘free-wheeling, three-point heavy, defense optional’ NBA product, it is worth noting that the first round of the playoffs has largely been a low-scoring, ill-tempered, physically demanding grind. Assuming the early season criticisms were being made in good faith — never a safe assumption — the play thus far would seem to be a step toward resolving those issues.
It is worth reminding why the NBA shifted away from the low-scoring, bruising play of the early 2000s. Not only was the game considered poorly played and the players criticized for their inability to hit a jump shot, but the pushing and shoving now remembered with rose-colored glasses sometimes spun out of control — leading to thinly veiled descriptions of players as of ‘thugs’ and ‘punks.’ The NBA probably went too far in discouraging physical play, but there was a reason beyond players being ‘soft.’
One of the key questions in sports television is why we watch. It may seem obvious that we watch for the on-field action — great plays, close games, the human drama of competition — but one might get a different impression if judging by the networks carrying the events. All too often, the networks’ priorities are less the games themselves and more the people talking about said events.
ESPN in particular has mastered the art of making its pundits’ opinions as important — if not moreso — than the event being broadcast. For a recent example, look to this past weekend. What was the big takeaway from ESPN’s NFL Draft coverage? Surely the Shedeur Sanders draft fall, but more specifically, Mel Kiper Jr.’s opinions about the Shedeur Sanders draft fall.
Kiper is as associated with the NFL Draft as any individual in television — or the league, even — but even with that said, it all seemed to be a bit much.
