Walt Disney once said the following:

We don’t make movies to make money. We make money to make more movies.

Now, the truth behind that is debatable: Walt was as passionate capitalist and he rode the wave of American imperialism after World War 2 with the best of them. But the sentiment is lovely. And it’s the kind of thing I wish more titans of industry would adopt since it conveys a fundamental respect for craft.

More specifically, I wish Adam Silver – the commissioner of the NBA and capitalist turtle¹ – felt the same way about basketball. Because it’s painfully clear that he cares about basketball as a vehicle for making money more than he cares about making money to support basketball.

Want to watch basketball games? Fuck you.

Eager to chase as much money as possible, the NBA has made games harder and harder to watch. If you’re in the US, you now need a plethora of cable deals to watch any given game. Sure, you can subscribe to NBA League Pass – but not if you want to watch your local team thanks to arcane blackout rules that mean you have to go through your regional cable provider.

None of this is to benefit fans: it’s all about money.

Adam Silver was recently asked about fans who can’t afford all these streaming services (emphasis mine):

There’s a huge amount of our content that people can essentially consume for free. I mean, this is very much a highlights-based sport. Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, you name it, any service, there’s an enormous amount of content that consumers can consume.

First, Silver using the word “content” to describe basketball games is a red flag. It’s a word that devalues anything it’s used to describe and turns it into a fetid mush – undifferentiated from the dumbest tweet you’ve ever read – whose only value is to hold someone’s attention for a millisecond so someone, somewhere can extract a penny from your eye socket.  

You never call anything you love – or value – content. Content is, by definition, dead behind the eyes.

Second, the NBA is only a “highlights-based sport” insofar as the NBA have systematically made it real fucking hard to watch the games. The statement alone signals that the games themselves are secondary to the few moments that go viral. Why watch a game? It’s a 48-minute event that takes 120 minutes to watch. Just click on a highlight on YouTube, say someone is washed in the comments, and then watch the recommended video that’ll set you off on a radicalisation spiral. Don’t forget to like and subscribe.

The NBA being a “highlights-based sport” doesn’t benefit its fans (who, allegedly, enjoy the sport of basketball): it benefits the platforms that host, distribute, and monetise those highlights.

Those social media platforms don’t care about basketball. They just want “content” that keeps people on platform so they can make ad money. The networks don’t care about basketball. They care about “inventory” that fills time slots they can sell ads against and exclusivity so they can exploit local interest in teams and charge egregious prices despite doing nothing at all to improve the viewing experience.

But, hey, this model works, right? Sure. In that it makes a few people an obscene amount of money. Cool.

Basketball isn’t basketball

Every year, the value of basketball teams goes up because of this cycle. Surprise: this doesn’t benefit fans in the slightest.

As teams become more valuable, they price out the fans that spurred on this interest. TV deals increase in value, leading networks to extract yet more money from fans to make the “investment” worthwhile through ads, yet more ads, and subscription cost (note: they don’t invest in making the viewing experience better – that’d cost more).

Meanwhile, the games themselves get slower (literally mandatory “TV timeouts” so they can run ads). They get more embroiled in controversy as gambling companies get more involved. And everything around the game is just a bit more mediocre.

Better things are possible

Adam Silver and the NBA could spend the next year implementing the most fan-friendly policies possible. They could make the game a tighter, better broadcast experience (with fewer stoppages and ads). They could, somehow, lower ticket prices. They could make it easier to watch games wherever you are.

Let’s just say that wipes a zero off the end of team valuations. That wouldn’t hurt anyone but the owners who are already billionaires (and likely bought a team so they felt cool and exclusive) – which is to say it wouldn’t matter at all.²

But fans would be infinitely better off. Here’s the thing: the game itself has never been better. The sport of basketball is incredible. The players are more talented. The coaching teams are smarter than ever. It’s a joy.

Just, you know, good luck watching it.