Sports
NBA Bets On In-Season Tournament To Boost Value Of Media Deal – Forbes
A photograph of the luminous championship trophy of the National Basketball Association.
The NBA is going all out to get its fans to fall in love with its new In Season Tournament where the winner will be awarded the NBA Cup. Modeling their early season tournament after other sports leagues like college basketball and the Premier League, the NBA is positioning itself as the best-run and marketed sports organization in the world. It is at the forefront of innovation as it gears up for a new media deal.
Creating the tournament is a smart move and a low-risk proposition other than the money spent marketing and promoting the tournament. The league has simply converted regular season games to tournament games during the least important part of the NBA season. If this tournament doesn’t catch on with the NBA’s marketing muscle then those games were never going to be important to viewers. I remember attending the announcement for the tournament in Las Vegas at NBA Summer League. It was an extravagant press event with ESPN talent and NBA stars, including Victor Wembanyama, in attendance. The event was like a massive pep rally complete with a New Year’s Eve ball drop ceremony leading up to the announcement made by Commissioner Adam Silver.
This morning Silver was a guest on ABC’s Good Morning America. ABC is owned by Disney, one of the NBA’s most important media partners, and the first games of the In Season Tournament were broadcast on ESPN. Silver explained the format of the tournament beginning with pool play, a knockout round, with the final four teams traveling to Las Vegas in early December to play for the NBA Cup. He effectively answered their softball questions and compared the tournament to the “in-season” tournaments that have gone on for years in soccer. He also compared the tournament to early-season tournaments in college basketball and of course alluded to the Final Four as the culmination of the NBA’s March Madness Tournament. Silver closed by explaining that the tournament games will be played on distinctive floors designed specifically for the tournament. The players will also be wearing specially designed uniforms—all to give the tournament unique branding.
In order to promote this new property the NBA has created a huge marketing campaign fueled by featuring a promotional video called “The Heist” patterned after the film Oceans Eleven, a movie set in Las Vegas. It even has its own theme song with LL Cool J and the Roots re-imagining the 90s hit “Mamma Said Knock You Out”.
Adam Silver the NBA Commissioner is firmly behind the new NBA In Season Tournament (Photo by Andy … [+]
If successful, the tournament could add some welcome firepower to the NBA’s upcoming media negotiations central to the future financial growth of the league. Audience reach and growth is everything in building value in live sports and that is the NBA’s strategy behind creating this new property and hoping it will become appointment TV. This requires star power on the court and competition for a prize athletes want to win. To put in perspective, think of the difference between a meaningless game in the standings and a game that will determine the NBA title. Even though the same players may be competing in both games, fan interest is measurably different.
The question is how important this tournament will ultimately be to the players when compared to winning an NBA championship. Think of those iconic photos of Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant in tears holding their NBA Championship trophy.
In the last analysis, the reaction of the players will be the true test of how much fans will care about this new property. There have been a number of suggestions on how to level up the importance of the NBA Cup to the players such as giving the winning team an automatic playoff berth, although that might not mean much to a team that would likely qualify for the playoffs anyway. Perhaps the winning team could be guaranteed home-court advantage for the entire playoffs.
During the first night of games, ESPN was furiously promoting the tournament. Their on-air talent could not have been more enthusiastic. I watched with some fans just to see their reaction. Many of them were annoyed by the flashy court designs and uniforms. That is expected with anything new, but at least they noticed. Sometimes initial negative reactions can change and give way to acceptance over time.
The jury is still out on this and we’ll have a better idea after the Final Game in Las Vegas in December when one team hoists the newly minted NBA Cup. If we see tears in the eyes of the winning team we’ll know the tournament has achieved true success.