NBA monetization for Independent broadcasters

In the NBA there are many people trying to monetize this entertainment called NBA. The NBA is a private organization that is built at scale and it continues growing in terms of maturity and popularity; and continues being an innovator in terms of adoption of technologies and new operation models.

In this post I would like to focus on the challenge of monetizing being an independent broadcaster. But before I would like to establish some bases through 2 elemental questions.

Where do I see the NBA in the long term?

I see the NBA as an entertainment platform where there is space for the physical experience and the digital experience in many ways.

Nowadays they are trying to grow and consolidate the spaces they are taking from other entertainments (other sports, other type of entertainment as gaming, etc).

I do not know if my interpretation of the current scenario is right, happy to hear where I’m wrong.

What are the different types of NBA consumers?

I mentioned before the NBA is trying to grow. To do it, I would like to use a simplified classification of NBA supporters. It’s far away from being perfect, but it tries to reflect how not all supporters are equal, and how you need to attend all of them to increase the growth.

Focal stage	NBA’s Goal?	How?
Awareness	Introduce the individual to the NBA and its appeal.	Exposure through social media clips, advertisements, news…
Interest	Generate curiosity about the NBA and its culture.	Watching highlights or following a specific player, learning basic rules, or discussing NBA-related topics.
Exploration	Encourage active engagement with the NBA.	Watching short clips, following the outcomes of popular games, starting to form opinions about players, teams, or coaches, and possibly engaging in light social discussions around NBA content.
Engagement	Build a habit of consuming NBA content regularly.	Watching full games or recaps, choosing a “favorite” team or player to follow, joining online discussions or forums, and perhaps even participating in NBA fantasy leagues.
Commitment	Develop loyalty to the NBA and specific teams or players.	Regularly following multiple teams or games, buying team merchandise, attending games if possible, and becoming an active participant in the community (e.g., posting on social media, reading NBA news daily).
Advocacy	Encourage others to engage with the NBA.	Sharing NBA content, introducing friends or family to games, actively discussing NBA topics, and advocating for the NBA as a part of social identity. The person is now a full supporter and possibly a lifelong fan.

There are many types of classifications we can do to the NBA supporters. All of them are valid and important to segment this population. I have used this one to highlight how diverse is the amount of people that consume NBA. You can use geography, age, origin, culture…

“NBA consumer” should not be taken with a negative condition, but just to attend the situation where something is offered (offer) and it’s demanded or consumed by some people, that’s it.

Let’s see how the context is organized now

The users

• The target user is the anchor of the map, it includes the non-NBA consumer and the NBA consumer. I have linked both to visualize the evolution of the supporter as commented in the previous paragraph.
• The NBA: I have highlighted the main need I see here: growth. I have concreted, for simplification purposes on increasing the fun base.
• The Independent broadcaster: small company, journalists or advocates that generate their own content in a professional way and are fighting for monetizing their knowledge/work/passion. Here it’s relevant to remember that anyone can be an independent broadcaster, there’s no moat.

The NBA data

The NBA data I mean the mainstream content. Right now, and differentiating from other sports competitors, NBA allows the use of their data, and to publish in social networks without banning the content.

Why? Because they are willing to grow, and they know that content promotes new funbase.

Think about soccer in some countries: you cannot see highlights, you cannot see the best players etc. if you are not part of that private space.

NBA’s content is one of their more valuable assets they have, and they are exploiting it as best as they can. For the NBA its content is “custom build” as it’s one of their core assets and they generate it game by game.

But for the consumer is a commodity. It’s there, you consume it or not. If there’s not NBA, then you watch other sport, series in Netflix, or play games or get engaged with other type of entertainment. The NBA is aware of it, they are not the only entertainment in the world.

The NBA allows the use of data, but they desincentivice the wrong use of this data. For instance, there were people doing highlights with the games to monetize through advertisement in YouTube. The NBA saw it and they created automated highlights that are launched not at the end of the game, but just one quarter is finished and can be consumed the first ones. In this way the number of highlights of other people have decreased. Can you do it? for sure, but you should offer something more valuable with the right timing.

Data needs to be consumed, not only by the current supporters but by more people. How can the NBA do it? I differentiate two types of mechanisms to promote the NBA: broadcasters and glue elements.

Broadcasters and glue elements

There are many broadcasters: TV, Radio, magazines, TV shows, podcasts… some of them with high visibility and some others are very local.

There are many glue elements too: glue elements are the ones that attract the people to repeat and continue paying attention. It could be a local player (Wembayamba in France, Yao Ming in China or Pau Gasol in Spain), it could be a local journalist from Chile, it could be the visit of Los Angeles Lakers to Paris. I refer to elements that stick in the memories of the people and it’s very close to them.

Why is this differentiation important? let’s go back to the Independent broadcasters

The NBA has a lot of channels to reach many people, but all of them are generalists, and generalist elements only impact in the surface. You need local players acting in each territory to go deeper in the population.

Here is where the independent broadcasters play a key role.

Where does the independent broadcasters should not go?

They should avoid to be close to the content, to the data. If they do it, they will be kick out by the NBA as they are taking care of one of their more valuable asset.

Remember, right now the NBA is in grow stage, but once they want to consolidate or exploit the business in a different way, one of the things they can do is to close the access to the data.

Where does the independent broadcasters should go?

They should go in the direction of increasing the value of their content, to have a clear style, to have their own subset of NBA consumers where that independent broadcaster is the entry point into the NBA world.

Social networks are a reference to be measured by the impact they potentially can have, but the level of engagement they promote and they are able to provide is relevant too, as this engagement level is the glue that make the people to stay engaged. The NBA is aware of this and they promote or sponsor this type of independent broadcasters, as they go deeper than the NBA with its generalist broadcasters can reach.

I have highlighted in light-blue the value chain where the independent broadcaster should focus.

Ok, but how can the independent broadcaster monetize it?

This is the more difficult part, how to monetize it. The independent broadcasters do not own the data, not intellectual property, the timespan of the a news is just hours, there’s no moat (anyone can be playing the role of independent broadcasters). It’s a red ocean.

To me, the direct monetization through advertisement or similar mechanism is very difficult, and the unit price decreases very fast.

The belonging or collaboration with major broadcasters is the prefered channel, but the competence here is so high and this is limited to just few players.

The use of derivatives: books, conferences, training… it’s another mechanism. In the same way that there are actors that build their own shows and they travel the cities showing their own show, I believe some independent broadcasters will be doing it in the next years.

Takeaways

This suggestions for independent broadcasters are easy to say, difficult to implement and more than complex to monetize.

If you see how the NBA is building NBA LaunchPad platform/ecosystem, then you can notice that the NBA is building its own digital platform for enabling the consumption of their own product. In the long term they do not want only to manage who exploits their content, they want to act as a major player being in different places of the value chain.