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NBA commissioner Adam Silver believes the way the NBA is produced and consumed by fans could be much different in the near future.
Silver was a panelist at a recent talk with Recode, and the commissioner brought forth some possible scenarios that the league could explore in terms of how its product is presented to its audience.
“What I think will happen over the next several years, and these discussions are going on now, when you think about the way games are produced on ESPN for example, it’s the same way it looked 30 years ago.”
“Now if you think about, if anyone here is a gamer, if you go on Twitch for example… it’s sort of constant chatter of fans there’s all kinds of other information appearing on the screen. I think to older consumers used to looking at sports it might look incredibly cluttered, but as Facebook and other services experiment with live sports rights, and I’m sure Amazon’s going to be doing the same thing, I think they don’t have the same limitations cable and satellite historically have had.
“Really, it’s not for a lack of creativity from the great cable and satellite companies, its the limitation of technology of the cable box. And what they do over the top is you can have unlimited fields on your screen. You can have information popping on, coming off. You can have descriptions of plays and information about players… I think our game, not next year, but three, four, five years from now it’s going to start looking very different.”
With the constantly changing technologies, as well as the changing demographic of the NBA, it’s Silver’s responsibility as commissioner to explore all of the potential innovations that the league could adopt in order to make its product more appealing to fans and more profitable to owners.
There are a wealth of options the league could explore given the vast number of streaming services and other technological advancements. Luckily, Silver is as astute a commissioner as there is in any sports league today, and he should have the trust of NBA fans to steer the league toward the right direction moving forward.
