As the NBA enters into 11-year media rights deals reportedly worth a collective $77 billion, Bill Simmons hypothesized how the league can maximize interest and continue growing the game. Kirk Goldsberry, a former writer for Grantland and award-winning author, recently appeared on The Bill Simmons Podcast and elaborated on a recent project he and his class explored at the University of Texas at Austin. The students analyzed the NBA league business and came up with ideas on how to change it using various data points in their research.
Some of the findings exhibited that television ratings reached a low point in December and rebounded following the record-breaking Christmas Day game between the Lakers and Golden State Warriors, which averaged 7.8 million viewers on ABC. In the end, Goldsberry concluded that the season needs to start 45 days later into the calendar, thus tipping off play in early December.
“This is really for one main reason, which is to get away from the monster that is football, specifically NFL and college football, which hogs all of our attention,” Goldsberry said. “It hogs my attention in the fall, it hogs your attention, and we think that there’s a compelling case for the NBA to consider moving out from under that boot of that football attention.”
Simmons acknowledged that the NBA is essentially going up against the NFL for the first 11 weeks of play, which comprises 45% of the regular-season slate. Once the NFL season comes to a close, the NBA trade deadline is oftentimes completed and the league usually goes into the All-Star Break, something he affirmed elicits complaints about the diminished quality of All-Star Weekend. Although 45 days seemed like a lot to him initially, further inquiry surrounding the situation evinced the feasibility of such a number.
“To me, the goal should be, ‘How do we get away from football as much as possible?,’” Simmons averred. “‘How do we take advantage of all of June instead of having the Finals end on June 18, June 19. Why are we throwing away June?,’ and then, ‘Could July really work for us?,’ and I think we both agree it could.”
Bob Iger, the chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company, recently visited Goldsberry’s class and explained how the households using television measurement has traditionally dissuaded new programming in July. Yet with the proliferation of streaming and reduction in pay TV penetration rate, he admitted that this is no longer the case, and Goldsberry has seen companies launching shows at this time. Simmons agreed that the viewpoint was somewhat antiquated and added that television no longer simply has three networks with a season spanning from September to May.
“The number of weeks you could just get away from football is just a 100% positive, that’s it, Simmons said. “Like, ‘You’re not equal to football, you’re not going to be.’ It’s a way bigger audience. You don’t have the gambling [and] fantasy stuff that football has. You don’t have the ability for everybody to mobilize around Sundays, and football is getting better and better at doing their own schedule.”
In the end, Simmons feels that condensing the regular season to 76 games and beginning the schedule in early December with a mid-May finish would benefit the business. By this logic, the first three rounds of the playoffs would conclude in early July, and the NBA Finals would be over by the end of the month.
Simmons added that he has spoken to NBA people about this, who expressed pause over such a proposal because it would impact the two months off during the summer. Yet he mentioned how the NBA Summer League and NBA Draft usually take place in July, and by toning down the former, personnel would have August, September and half of October off before the preseason.
“Yeah, I think it would make way more money too, and there’s one word that hasn’t come up, which explains why it isn’t like this already, and that’s baseball,” Goldsberry said. “When the NBA started, avoiding baseball on the calendar was that era’s version of avoiding football now. You know, ‘Mickey Mantle and the Yankees – we can’t compete with that. Let’s start our season right after the World Series.’ That was the logic.”
Later in the segment, Simmons suggested that the league should abolish the All-Star Break and instead provide bye weeks for a third of the league at a time. If the league still desired to have a big, corporate event, he surmised that the Emirates NBA Cup could be a viable option.
“Some of the stuff that they’re already doing is a reaction to the fact that football is just killing them, right?,” Simmons said. “Moving the TNT Barkley show from Thursdays to Tuesdays during the NFL season is a direct concession that you’re getting destroyed on Thursday nights, just period. Doing this NBA Cup thing is a direct concession that nobody gives a sh*t about the NBA in late-October, November and December, and you need to do something to be like, ‘Hey, we’re over here.’ They just need to move it.”
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