Adam Silver positions NBA for breakthrough after Covid

On the eve of a new season, National Basketball Association commissioner Adam Silver made it clear that his league would not be jumping to receive Covid-19 vaccines as the NBA tries to normalize its activities.

The NBA returns on Tuesday for its 2020-21 campaign. The league chose to play a shortened season of 72 games due to pandemic stoppages from the previous season, which ended as usual in October instead of June. The NBA will seek to end this season before the Tokyo Olympics begin in July 2021, and align for a more normal off season before starting again in October 2021.

The NBA brought out two heavy hitters to start the new season. It features the Kevin Durant-led Brooklyn Nets against his former team, the Golden State Warriors, and the return of their star, Stephen Curry.

The second matchup: the defending champions Los Angeles Lakers are hosting the Clippers, their cross-down rivals. This match-up was predicted to be the preview of the Western Conference final, but Steve Ballmer’s team struck early last year despite landing stars Kawhi Leonard and Paul George.

Friday, the Christmas Day lineup of the NBA features international superstars including Giannis Antetokounmpo from Milwaukee Bucks, Luka Doncic from Dallas Mavericks and Nikola Jokic from Denver.

Silver’s league is in an excellent position to enter a post-Covid world. The NBA is more diverse with competitive teams and stars scattered. The job remaining is to manage a season where the Covid pandemic is worse than when the league resumed in July.

“We are confident we can do it,” Silver said on Monday during his media call. And if we weren’t, we wouldn’t have started. However, I will say that we expect that there will be irregularities in the road. ‘

Silver said the NBA would assist in “government public messaging efforts” to promote the safety of the vaccine, and acknowledged the skepticism some have about the treatment.

“For me, my feeling is that there is a large group that I would place in the undecided category on the vaccine,” he said. “There is one cohort, I understand, that is strong anti-vaccine, and I think there will be opportunities to break that down.

“But I think there is a much larger group of people who just kind of take a wait and see approach, and I hope we see the potential workers getting their vaccines, health workers and then the elderly, and then people. See that this is safe and successful. happens, that the NBA community will welcome vaccines when it is our turn. ”

The NBA expects Covid vaccines to be more widespread by April, in time for the post-season, which kicks off in May. By then, local governments may give more teams the green light to open arenas, as playoff revenues are beneficial for teams.

“Getting fans back into the arenas is a huge priority,” Silver said, adding on Tuesday that about six teams can start with spectators, as Florida and Texas allow a number of fans into games. “I feel like we will learn a lot if we have regular season games with fans there.”

The NBA raised $ 900 million this year to support teams, and pandemic losses are expected to continue in the near term without fans.

After this season, the league could help make up for the difference by adding more teams, which will incur expansion costs. Silver said the NBA has been ramping up discussions on the topic, but added that they are still concerned about economic issues related to the pandemic and downturn.

Big clubs like New York Knicks – a team without star power, with consecutive seasons, brand and image problems – can still make a profit. But most clubs suffer from slow economic cycles financially, which would be the case for any expansion team.

“I think I’ve always said it’s kind of a manifest destination of the league that you expand at some point,” said Silver. “I would say it has led us to perhaps dust off some of the analysis of the economic and competitive effects of expansion. We put in a little more time than we did when we were pre-pandemic. But certainly not to the point. is on the front burner. “

Relocation is another option. Team owners can look for either option, as both pay fees to the NBA. Relocation can prevent the league from dividing the largest stream of revenue (media rights) among more owners, although clubs may have to pay relocation and liquidated damage clause costs if they try to escape the arena’s leases before the agreements expire .

The chatter among sports bankers has placed Seattle, Las Vegas and Kansas City in the NBA’s crosshairs.

The bigger question is whether those markets – or any market for that matter – can support a new team during an economic downturn.

“It’s an economic issue, and it’s a competition issue for us,” said Silver. “So it’s one we’ll continue to study, but we spend a little more time on it than on pre-pandemic.”

Perhaps the NBA’s most prominent play is its desire to continue its global expansion and do so with a younger audience. Silver said the competition “includes nearly two billion people who use the NBA in one way or another on social media worldwide.”

With consumer habits changing, the NBA’s race to exceed two billion would be huge in a post-Covid world, where a new generation of consumers seem uninterested in sports.

Research firm Morning Consult notes that Gen Z consumers (ages 13 to 23) are “less likely than the general population to be identified as sports fans. 53 percent of the 1,000 Gen Zers surveyed considered themselves sports fans, compared to 63 percent. of American adults and 69 percent of millennials in a subsequent survey. “

The only Gen Z consumers of the US Major League “who were over-indexed as fans relative to the general public” was the NBA.

That interest among younger consumers is why media experts’ project ratings will recover. And once Nielsen changes its rating system to include digital / streaming stats by 2024, the league’s media rights fees will only track the National Football League.

“All you do know about the NFL is the most engaging on TV, followed by the NBA,” said Kevin Krim, EDO’s founder and CEO.

Silver is a 72-game season away from navigating the NBA through its most challenging period. Again, some bumps are expected in the coming months, but the NBA appears to be positioned for a brighter future in a new decade and the post-Covid-19 reality.

That future starts on Tuesday.