Starting Off 2024 …

I realize that we have just begun to experience 2024, but I want to mention something that will happen early on in 2025 to start off today.  The NBA’s TV rights deals expire in 2025 and there will need to be new ones negotiated starting in the first six months of 2024.  Do not be surprised by the narrative that will be created surrounding those negotiations; it will contain these sorts of elements:

• The NBA is a rapidly growing enterprise.
• The NBA attracts a young and vibrant audience.
• The NBA has a huge following in the huge marketplace known as China.
• The NBA has bold/creative leadership experimenting with new concepts such as the In-Season Tournament.

You get the idea …  The so-called “NBA Insiders” will push that sort of narrative hard in the self-interest of the “insiders”.  Whatever actual access those folks have will be maintained and perhaps enhanced if they establish that narrative which will be useful to the league at the negotiating table.  I do not say this to “blame” the “insiders”; I say this because it is a natural occurrence; the NBA and the networks will try to do what is “best for business” from their perspective; the “insiders” will do exactly the same thing.

I mention all this because you should keep in mind some traces of reality as you are bombarded by elements of the upcoming narrative.

• The NBA has dominated Christmas Day from a sports perspective since the year the NBA was founded in 1949.
• The NBA has played at least two – – and as many as eight – – games on Christmas Day every year since then save for 1998 when the league locked out the players until mid-January 1999.
• The NBA has presented a nationally televised Christmas game or games since 1967.

The NBA has “owned Christmas Day” from a sports perspective for decades.  Nonetheless, for Christmas 2023, there was a head-to-head matchup for TV eyeballs between the NBA and the NFL.  Keep all those elements of the narrative outlined above in mind as you read the data from Christmas 2023:

• Largest audience for any of the NBA’s 5 games = 5 million (Lakers/Celtics)
• Average peak audience for the 5 NBA games = 2.82 million

Now compare those numbers with the audiences for the 3 NFL games on Christmas Day 2023:

• Largest NFL audience = 29.2 million (Chiefs/Raiders)
• Average peak audience for the 3 NFL games = 28.5 million

I will keep an eye out for any reporting that adds that comparative element to its portrayal of “the narrative”.  However, I do not expect to find it on prominent display.

There is potentially an interesting element to the overall picture for these TV rights negotiations.  I have read a couple of reports saying that Amazon would like to do a deal with the NBA to create an analog to Amazon’s Thursday Night Football programming with the NFL.  The idea would be for Amazon to have a package deal with the NBA to put on Tuesday Night Basketball using Prime Video as the distribution method.  Amazon and the NFL have worked together to grow the audience for Thursday Night Football to the point where Amazon draws more than 12 million viewers for many Thursday night games.  That audience is not nearly what Sunday audiences are for NFL games, but they are more than double the audiences for the biggest NBA Christmas games.

Amazon pays the NFL $1B annually for its Thursday Night package.  A similar package with the NBA would provide lots more games – – NBA teams play 82 regular season games over about 23 weeks as opposed to NFL teams which play only 17 regular season games over 18 weeks.  Can Amazon grow a “Tuesday Night clientele” similar to the one it has developed for the NFL?  Now that would be interesting to watch …

Switching gears …  Could it be that the NFL needs at least one of its owners to be a horse’s ass?  Think about it:

• Al Davis and the Raiders sued the league itself – – and won the case.
• Leonard Tose had to sell the team to pay off gambling debts.
• Eddie DeBartolo had to sell the team having been caught up in a bribery scam.
• Danny Boy Snyder – – well pick your own favorite outrageous behavior moment.

So, with Snyder off the see the world on his super-yacht, the league might be in need of an owner to step up and be the negative face of the league.

• Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Panthers’ owner, David Tepper who in frustration last weekend threw a drink at a fan of the opposing Jaguars as his Panthers lost that game 26-0.

For that kerfuffle, the NFL fined Tepper $300K which is to say the NFL did nothing.  Consider:

• Tepper’s net worth estimated at $20.6B
• NFL fine is 0.000015% of his estimated net worth.

If you had $100K in your bank account and you incurred a “fine” that had the same impact on your holdings as the NFL levied here, you would owe a total of $1.45.  That would teach you, right?

• Memo to David Tepper:  Taking over Danny Boy Snyder’s mantle as the NFL’s resident horse’s ass owner is not a good strategy.

Finally, let me close my first rant of 2024 with this pronouncement by my favorite curmudgeon, H. L. Mencken:

“Men are the only animals that devote themselves day in and day out, to making one another unhappy.  It is an art like any other.  Its virtuosi are called altruists.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………