This is not exactly true, both the NBA and MLB brought in roughly $10billion in 2022 and viewership is extremely similar. The NFL and NBA also fight for airtime given that the seasons overlap whereas the MLB only really has to compete with soccer. So if the MLB is getting comparable viewership with little competition, it's safe to say that the NBA would receive much more viewership under the same conditions, and is therefore America's second favorite sport.
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Apple Has 'Expressed Interest' in NBA Streaming Rights
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NBA ruined professional basketball by driving players salaries (including young guys in their teens and early twenties who can hardly be called adults) to astronomical values, and coming with all sorts of ways — none with fans in mind — to pay the bill: Excessive TV ads, stupid blackout rules, ridiculous ticket prices (when you’re not even guaranteed to see your favorite players because of time limit imposed on them for injury control). NBA is the demonstration of a professional sport monopoly that chokes the fans. Even for streaming, NBA could have brought in a lot of audio/video innovations and it hasn’t.
Apple had the weight to bend the music industry (offering to the mainstream consumer that is) toward true all you can listen streaming; I wish they had the same weight for NBA, and could go in and kick the hell out of their blackout and other stupid rules and present a clean all you can watch option (Clippers by the way is pioneering this new model).
The massive deals NBA teams have with local TV stations (cable industry) seems insurmountable, but to stand above the stupid League Pass and all the selective broadcasts fed to the poor fans, Apple needs to go in with heavy hands and bend this.
Apple had the weight to bend the music industry (offering to the mainstream consumer that is) toward true all you can listen streaming; I wish they had the same weight for NBA, and could go in and kick the hell out of their blackout and other stupid rules and present a clean all you can watch option (Clippers by the way is pioneering this new model).
The massive deals NBA teams have with local TV stations (cable industry) seems insurmountable, but to stand above the stupid League Pass and all the selective broadcasts fed to the poor fans, Apple needs to go in with heavy hands and bend this.
More importantly, the NBA is growing faster than MLB and has a more international presence because basketball is more popular worldwide. To play baseball, you need expensive equipment and a large field, which are hard to come by in poorer countries.
Also, Gen Z simply does not like baseball. Baseball is slow to watch, has way too many games so no one cares about the regular season, has too many old "unwritten rules" that viewers don't understand, has an "old boys club" feeling to it, unmarketable players.
The fact that you can see a strike thrown on TV because of the graphic overlay but the umpire still calls the pitch a ball is hilarious.
Here in Australia, we watch a 5-day Cricket Test Match. Baseball is such a fast moving sport 😂
Just give us a single platform to watch all games without blackout restrictions and it would be a hit
Sounds like it could be good but would the price be competitive? I doubt it, knowing Apple.
I have better chances at watching a streamed NBA game when I pirate it than when I pay for the NBA League Pass subscription. The blackout games depending on market and certain network rights make it impossible to view some games, for example; in 2016 I was living in Toronto and had League Pass and wanted to watch the All-Star that took place IN Toronto..... but couldnt, because of local networks owning the rights. Absolutely ridiculous.
The League Pass is a joke and if Apple somehow managed to trump the stupid blackouts, I'd subscribe. Otherwise; the NBA can pound sand.
The League Pass is a joke and if Apple somehow managed to trump the stupid blackouts, I'd subscribe. Otherwise; the NBA can pound sand.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Com'on people, you know how this goes…
Step 1: Rumor Apple is interested in a sports offering that will cost Billions. Fans very excited.
Step 2: a few more rumors sharing the same. Fan enthusiasm about the sport is high... looking forward to enjoying it on Apple tech.
Step 3: rumor that Apple is losing interest because the owner of the property won't give it to them for nearly nothing and/or let them devalue it down towards nothing. Fan enthusiasm begins turning against the sport because they are obviously stupid for not doing whatever Apple wants.
Step 4: someone else announced as the winner in bidding for the package. Fans ridicule the sport saying they have no interest in it at all, overpriced, athletes are paid too much, etc.
Think EVERY movie studio library that has come up the last few years. Think every big game studio. Think NFL-ST that just went this way recently... and NFL Thursday Night before that one.
Yes, Apple got ONE baseball night... BASEBALL... and soccer (but not the top league).
Basically, how this goes is the owner of the content wants to make MORE money than they can get through an existing channel and/or other players... and Apple seems to want them to practically give it away because... well because.
It just about always ends the same way. I'd peg this as near ZERO chance based on seeing this same movie over and over and over again...
UNLESS... this is about the goggles and Apple is trying to launch brand new revenue-generating package for major sports with VR Sunday Ticket, VR NBA League Pass, etc. Since that is not yet established major revenue, Apple might be able to throw relatively little money at it and get it for a while... kind of like Netflix getting to stream everyone's good stuff in the old days before they decided to get into streaming themselves. This would allow sports content owners to still sell established packages at big revenue amounts AND basically repackage the exact same product for a new kind of audience and new, added revenue for this fledgling VR crowd.
Given the ongoing Goggles rumor, this actually sounds plausible to me... and seems to be the ONE fit that MIGHT let Apple get something going for cheap because they don't have much competition to bid up comparable offerings.
Else, if this is a pure play to be shopped to Amazon, Hulu, YouTube, etc too, I expect one of THEM to get whatever this would be... because they will pay more for it.
Step 1: Rumor Apple is interested in a sports offering that will cost Billions. Fans very excited.
Step 2: a few more rumors sharing the same. Fan enthusiasm about the sport is high... looking forward to enjoying it on Apple tech.
Step 3: rumor that Apple is losing interest because the owner of the property won't give it to them for nearly nothing and/or let them devalue it down towards nothing. Fan enthusiasm begins turning against the sport because they are obviously stupid for not doing whatever Apple wants.
Step 4: someone else announced as the winner in bidding for the package. Fans ridicule the sport saying they have no interest in it at all, overpriced, athletes are paid too much, etc.
Think EVERY movie studio library that has come up the last few years. Think every big game studio. Think NFL-ST that just went this way recently... and NFL Thursday Night before that one.
Yes, Apple got ONE baseball night... BASEBALL... and soccer (but not the top league).
Basically, how this goes is the owner of the content wants to make MORE money than they can get through an existing channel and/or other players... and Apple seems to want them to practically give it away because... well because.
It just about always ends the same way. I'd peg this as near ZERO chance based on seeing this same movie over and over and over again...
UNLESS... this is about the goggles and Apple is trying to launch brand new revenue-generating package for major sports with VR Sunday Ticket, VR NBA League Pass, etc. Since that is not yet established major revenue, Apple might be able to throw relatively little money at it and get it for a while... kind of like Netflix getting to stream everyone's good stuff in the old days before they decided to get into streaming themselves. This would allow sports content owners to still sell established packages at big revenue amounts AND basically repackage the exact same product for a new kind of audience and new, added revenue for this fledgling VR crowd.
Given the ongoing Goggles rumor, this actually sounds plausible to me... and seems to be the ONE fit that MIGHT let Apple get something going for cheap because they don't have much competition to bid up comparable offerings.
Else, if this is a pure play to be shopped to Amazon, Hulu, YouTube, etc too, I expect one of THEM to get whatever this would be... because they will pay more for it.
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With NBA League Pass, one can watch all games except:
* your local team
* games shown on National TV channels (ABC, TNT, ESPN, NBA TV).
All blacked-out games may still be watched on NBA League Pass but not in real time (local team delays are two days or something like that, nationally televised games are shown much sooner)
Apple Music is essentially a copycat service that was started years after Spotify.
Thank you. So, to encourage locals to go to the games. That’s a shame. In Australia, AFL local games are always televised on free to air channels but often delayed by an hour or so. And to watch any game at all, live, you just pay for Fox Sports.
So that seems the agreement or licence is a condition from the teams/franchise themselves, and not the TV distributor.
So if Apple get a licence, the teams may not get a choice, because Apple rarely restrict regions, rather than entire countries. That could be a big sticking point for an Apple licence.
What do you mean? This is a service, not a hardware product. Apple has always made music fairly priced and also started the app store quite low priced. If any entity can help move the NBA to stop f*cking the fans financially it is Apple.
Napster and Pandora were also way before Spotify. What’s your point? It’s about the weight in the market place. I didn’t see Spotify at the Super Bowl. So whilst Spotify was before Apple, Apple generally provides more to the industry than Spotify. They pay 3 times as much to artists.
NBA used to be more popular in the Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, etc... years.
Nowadays it's more niche, probably due to pay per view and dedicated payed channels. Football (the round ball type) is even more overwhelming.
But, you are right, in Europe everybody knows, played basketball in school and knows NBA is the gold standard. Baseball is that werid American game nobody even knows the rules.
You (and the NBA) miss the point. The local team is the primary team folks want to watch, duh, making NBA League Pass blacking out local teams a cruel joke. NBA's gross incompetence at delivering their product (games) is horrific.
E.g. more than 7 million people live in the SF Bay Area, but NBA management blacks out Warriors games. Why? Because they expect 7M folks to show up live? WTF are the morons thinking? Wannabe fans like me find other entertainment because the fools running the NBA intentionally keep us from watching.
And please do not insult us by telling us we can watch a blacked-out game later. Two days later the game is just a statistic.
It truly is nuts. The NBA badly needs to hire some MBAs. Or just give Apple a shot at it. Apple's track record (Music, App Store, Apple Pay, etc.) is excellent.
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It seems crazy that most games are sellouts or close to it and they still do this. It seems like they are penalising the fans.
Having games available means more fans are watching, getting invested and ultimately that means more revenue.
"Packages" are always bad for consumers. It means that the consumer needs more than one streaming service if he wants to watch all matches. That happened in Germany. You need two different streaming services to get access to all Bundesliga matches. That would make me quite angry as a consumer.