With more and more media covering professional basketball, where can you watch your favorite NBA team play next? The league wants to help.
With just days left until the start of next season, the NBA is launching a new initiative to help fans find the games they want to watch, including local games as well as domestic games available on Disney’s ESPN and ABC. NBCUniversal’s NBC and Peacock. And Amazon Prime Video.
“We are focused on making sure our fans know where to find our games,” said NBA Senior Vice President Sara Zuckert, who oversees the league’s mobile apps. “We recognize that they have two great new media partners this season, and because of that, fans may not necessarily know where our games are.”
Thanks to a new deal with NBCU and Amazon, the NBA will introduce new “tap to watch” technology and showcase a wide range of games previously earmarked for Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney as games move en masse to streaming platforms. Fans using the NBA App, NBA.com, and team apps and websites will be shown how to access game telecasts through digital platforms such as Google, Meta, X, Snap, Reddit, Roku and Dapper Labs, as well as local and national rights holders.
“Live games are the core of the NBA fan experience,” Zuckert said, explaining that facilitating access to digital audiences is “essential.” This technology brings fans to the platform showing the game and assists them through the process if they are not a subscriber.
The NBA isn’t the only sports organization interested in this kind of thing. Last August, ESPN rolled out a “where to watch” search feature on its mobile app and website in an effort to prove its usefulness to all fans. This is a feature that all sports fans have been clamoring for since Amazon acquired the rights to stream portions of the NFL’s Thursday Night Football in 2017. A new broadband giant, with sports streaming on league-owned stations and territories, will help enthusiasts who are increasingly frustrated in their efforts to find their favorite team. venue.
I think what’s really going to be a top priority for all of us is making sure people know where to go. “There are 40 percent more signature games than last year, but people need to know where they can watch them,” Tim Corrigan, Disney’s senior vice president of sports production for ESPN, said in a briefing with reporters earlier this week. The deal, and it’s going to be more accessible, and some of the streaming stuff is going to be something that’s really necessary. We need to drive people and let them know where to go. ”
Initiatives like this highlight the growing importance of tracking sports as rights deals increasingly spread across different venues. Because sports is the only form of television that can simultaneously attract the large number of viewers that advertisers and distributors covet, the prices to keep sports on the air have gone from eye-watering to exorbitant. Prices have become so high that media companies have narrowed down their packages, leaving some major leagues like the NBA spread across more networks and streamers. Add to this the changing landscape of local rights, and it’s no wonder that sports fans’ efforts to quickly find the right game at the right time are hampered.
