If you had any doubt about the significant financial impact the return of the NBA will have not only on the league, but for individual teams as well, then you would only need to look at how much the Los Angeles Lakers are looking to net for playing eight regular seasons games in the league's newly-adjusted bubble format. This comes out to the tune of a whopping $12,000,000 or roughly $1,500,000 per game played.
This reports comes courtesy of The Athletic's Sam Amick (h/t Christian Rivas of Silver Screen & Roll):
Article Continues BelowTo wit: Sources say the Lakers pull in approximately $1.5 million per game from their RSN deal with Spectrum SportsNet, meaning they’ll recoup $12 million from those games in all while losing an estimated $8 million because the schedule won’t be completed. As I wrote in March of 2019, the first round is a bigger money-maker for teams than the last three rounds because teams still hold local television and radio rights before yielding in the second round. For league-wide perspective, one of the lower-end RSN deals that I’ve heard of pays approximately $200,000 per game.
That's a lot of money, and you have to note that these are just for television and radio rights. Who knows how much they will be looking to earn from other avenues?
The report also states that the Lakers will also be looking at a loss of $8 million for not being able to play the other games in the regular season, but all things considered, a gain of $12 million is still much, much better than nothing.
This perspective proves that one of, if not the primary motivation of the league in its decision to resume the season is the financial ramifications of the same. Much like any other business anywhere, it is necessary to try and get the ball rolling again, so to speak, not only for their personal gain or the business but more so to be able to jump-start the coronavirus-hit economy as well.