Commissioner Adam Silver on the NBA and Modern Media

Commissioner Adam Silver commented on how the National Basketball Association is facing a rapidly changing media landscape, citing the league’s ability to mine consumer data and use its League Pass platform to match in a piece by Ben Golliver of the Washington Post. In the article, Silver explains that the league uses data from top to bottom, but it has been particularly useful in pinning down the ever-shifting tastes of media consumers.

“We’re in an enormously competitive environment where customers dictate what they want,” Silver said. “We want you to be able to see an alert that James Harden is going for 70 points and buy the last five minutes of that game for $0.99 on the spot.”

Additionally, Silver addressed the roles that players, the players’ association, teams, and owners have in sustaining a competitive system that appeals to viewers.

“Our competition isn’t just between NBA teams; it’s against every other form of entertainment,” he said. “It’s incumbent upon the players, their union, the owners and the league office to come together to develop the best system for creating competition [on the court]. That will put us in the best position to compete against everything else.”

There is one key thing that could impact the league in the near future: Silver mentions the league’s proposal to lower the draft age. That alone could move viewers from competing media to consuming NBA content. Regardless of the shift in player age, there is no doubt that how media consumers engage with basketball-related content is changing.

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