Been saying for over a year now that the NBA should contract the bulls and put a real professional franchise in Chicago. It’s the right business decision. Glad to see it’s catching on
Looking at the state of professional sports teams in Chicago should lead most, if not all people to believe that Chicago need not add any more failing organization to its collection. The Bulls are bad. The Bears are bad. The White Sox are bad. The Blackhawks are bad. The Cubs are meh at best. Why in Sam hell would Chicago add ANOTHER team?!
Outside of the media market opportunities it’s hard to sell Chicago at this point. The taxes in Illinois are TERRIBLE. The bears are struggling to get their stadium situation sorted out. Jerry wants a new stadium for the White Sucks. I mean there are places where a new team could play, but I just don’t see why anybody would want to start up another franchise in Chicago right now.
The teams are doing fine financially, it's the leagues that suffer because they subsidize the team. That is what I'm trying to address as a completely serious, not facetious at all, concern
The author's article was "tongue in cheek." Reinsdorf has said he'd pay the luxury tax once he had a team of players that deserved that level of pay. They have to do a better job of drafting and developing players.
The NBA's problems start in the commissioner's office. Why does he make the big bucks? High school teams require their players to be able to dribble ... not so in the NBA. Not only is nothing called, they're allowed the Euro-Step. The lunatics are running the asylum.
Agreed, the commissioner needs to step in. Businessmen are taught to maximize revenues not just lower expenses, yet the Chicago market gets an owner who fails to do this for decades? And you know Young executives are brought up to make trades. Yet the Bulls executive can't. And worse he euro-negotiates.
And yet the Bulls practically fill their stadium for every game and are among the league’s attendance leaders. But agreed, they need a few good moves and another pick or two. They're working on it.
Reinsdorf has paid $8 million in luxury taxes over 24 years, which is a little more than 1/10th of what the high-rolling big market Milwaukee Bucks will pay in 2025 alone.
No need to pull a muscle imagining castles in the sky. Move that team 90 minutes south and it would be the biggest thing in the NBA.
The league likes Reinsdorf when it comes time for collective bargaining negotiations, he's like showing up at an arms control summit with John Bolton and Curtis LeMay on your side of the table. His psychosexual urge to crush labor is probably a net benefit to the other owners but of increasingly limited utility, particularly when he's been the most significant beneficiary of the penalties he's argued for. We're following a sports team that is really just a front for a board room made up of dead guys and lawyers representing trusts now. We're not even into the fact this guy wants us to build a 3rd stadium for him and has already dangled out the threat of moving one of his shitty teams.
I think the most plausible explanation is that it's nothing idiosyncratic about the NBA at all. Ratings for pretty much everything legacy that isn't the NFL are depressed. So a good explanation would probably have to cover all that shit as well.
I obviously get this post's motivation for expansion... but the NBA's really confuses me. Every CBA negotiation in my lifetime featured at least one proclamation by the NBA that like 20 of the 30 teams aren't profitable. Why would they think the marginal teams will be better than those 20 profit sink holes?
I also wonder if expansion serves the tastes of Adam Silver personally, and what I guess I'll call NBA nerds (::raises hand::) broadly, but neglects the tastes of marginal fans. Like, I don't think marginal fans like parity? And I'm not sure NBA podcasters want to hear this, but I think marginal NBA fans love dynasties. And would basically like to see LeBron vs Steph in the finals till the sun explodes.
I also think the NBA seems to have been trying to dampen player movement? This works for NBA nerds (::raises hand::) who lament that people care more about trade rumors than the actual game. But... marginal fans really like player movement? I think that's true.
But whatever. More you could say about what could nudge the needle of NBA popularity. I still go back to the first point I made. That's probably the issue. The Bulls issue probably requires a kind of wetwork solution. I bet the NBA Cup sponsor knows plenty of those guys, so it's probably a phone call or two away, Adam.
There is always a majority on the side of expansion: the player's association will never be opposed to 30 new jobs and a significant number of owners want the fees (Jerry has historically had an intense craving for those beautiful outside-my-market fees.) The rest of the owners want more buyers, driving up the valuation of their properties, and, finally, these deals are no longer "just" for a franchise and a logo and free all-star game tix. Every new franchise will involve a stadium that is really the centerpiece of a broader real estate development, now with on-site gambling to boot. This shit is now so far removed from even 20 years ago. The Lasrys bought into Milwaukee not because they love the team or wanted to deliver a championship (thought that was nice, well done everyone!) but for the stadium and the development around it. They multiplied their investment manyfold over just 10 years by putting that together, sold the team at the first opportunity but kept their interests in adjacent real estate around it.
The actually *team* is reduced to a kind of abstraction in these plans. They could be a soccer team if it made the numbers work. It could be a site for public executions for that matter. They'll throw out the rah-rah shit to get the rubes high and sometimes it will even work (Milwaukee, maybe Phoenix?) but it's almost beside the point. It's a pretty weird evolution and the future looks increasingly like a cyberpunk novel where denizens of the future ChicagoZone organize themselves into murderous roller gangs defending the honor of Coke vs. the Pepsi tribe.
Nielson Ratings are an outdated measure of fan engagement in my opinion. One reason is that it neglects the growth of and revenue stream from the global audience. Second reason, somewhat related, is the popularity and revenue of streaming games. NBA Season Pass subscriptions have grown tremendously. Also, a lot of people like me (a Bulls fan in Massachusetts) can stream their home team out-of-market. This consumer market was non-existent to negligible not long ago. This is why there's no "ratings crisis" in the eyes of Adam Silver and other NBA owners and executives. Just my take.
Nielsen is not a good measure of fan engagement. It is, however, one of the few data points that doesn't originate from the NBA itself. The claim that NBA Season Pass subscriptions have "grown tremendously" is one of those: the NBA doesn't release its numbers (and holds TNT, which actually does most of the operations for League Pass, to the same silence), just a press release noting a simple percentage marking "growth." No details, and no indication of how many new subscribers are from free offers and bundling (which all the streaming companies did for several years to boost user numbers, but as public companies had an obligation to disclose this which the NBA does not). The NBA would have every reason to do this entering into bidding for their next broadcasting contract.
If the revenue was great, I think they'd publish that too, for the same reasons relating to new negotiations. As it is League Pass, NBATV, NBA dot com, etc. are just tucked into the Amazon deal almost without being more than a footnote.
I don't think it's wrong, it's just only part of the picture. I think there are fewer fans of teams rather than players, and if you don't have any attachment to a team, you probably don't care enough to watch a full game for the few highlights of your favorite player that you actually care about. You could watch the ending of today's Knicks/Spurs games within minutes of it ending without paying a thing. That, I think, is where a lot of the fan engagement "escaped" to. A lot of the other reasons really point to this same conclusion: that most people don't watch full games or even want to. This seems really different than the NFL.
Man, I am watching this San Antonio/Knicks game and it is freakin' dire. The basketball is fine enough but, good god, there are a lot of commercials. I know you can point to literally any other American sport and say it is the same, but this is not true for soccer or rugby. I cannot watch a freakin' pfizer commercial that lasts a full two minutes in the middle of a match. Life is too short.
This is why I rarely ever watch sports live anymore. I usually start them far enough behind that I'm able to catch up by the end of the game by fast forwarding through the commercials.
Yes, very much so. Every time I switch back to American sports I can't do it.
I think the amount of time dedicated to stoppage is up, but I also think that the cadence of commercials has changed and that has a lot to do with it. Somehow the cheesier ads of the 90's matched the flow of the game better than these dire pharmaceutical ads. Who wants to be reminded that this is a dying nation during a timeout?
I know that the NBA will never do anything "good" but if they matched the European style with fewer games and more reasonable ad breaks, all of this hand-wringing would go away pretty quickly. A basketball team in a European league essentially spends all week preparing for their next opponent. The importance of individual games are much higher so there are no nights off and a lot higher frequency for "good wins" in the regular season. Even if you don't win a trophy you can still point to some real successes and great nights, This just gets lost if you are playing 82 games and spend the first half of the season working yourself into shape for the playoffs.
I think these conversations that are happening right now about declining popularity (as screamface YouTube thumbnail as some of the arguments are) are helpful. For years the solution was basically to (a) manipulate rules to increase scoring and (b) fuck labor, because fuck labor. I don't think that's gonna work this time.
The problem is that the notion that Adam Silver is in any way independent or responsible for the long-term integrity of the game is largely a coping mechanism. He works for the owners. The NBA as an organization works for them. We can have these conversations all we want but no one with any power is incentivized to think in the long term. And a more reasonable schedule goes directly against the short-term profits of both the players and the owners.
Silver has intervened in a bunch of things that as far as I can tell nobody ever asked for. The common denominator of the in-season tournament, play-in games and splitting the draft into two days (despite there only being 60 picks, fewer than any sport) is that they created packages with more ad inventor to sell. I mean all three of these created official programming out of nothing. So there is undoubtedly gonna be no reprieve from that. They're actually creating exhibition games that don't count to sell ads on them, which seems like some kind of taboo in sports.
Been saying for over a year now that the NBA should contract the bulls and put a real professional franchise in Chicago. It’s the right business decision. Glad to see it’s catching on
Looking at the state of professional sports teams in Chicago should lead most, if not all people to believe that Chicago need not add any more failing organization to its collection. The Bulls are bad. The Bears are bad. The White Sox are bad. The Blackhawks are bad. The Cubs are meh at best. Why in Sam hell would Chicago add ANOTHER team?!
Outside of the media market opportunities it’s hard to sell Chicago at this point. The taxes in Illinois are TERRIBLE. The bears are struggling to get their stadium situation sorted out. Jerry wants a new stadium for the White Sucks. I mean there are places where a new team could play, but I just don’t see why anybody would want to start up another franchise in Chicago right now.
The teams are doing fine financially, it's the leagues that suffer because they subsidize the team. That is what I'm trying to address as a completely serious, not facetious at all, concern
The author's article was "tongue in cheek." Reinsdorf has said he'd pay the luxury tax once he had a team of players that deserved that level of pay. They have to do a better job of drafting and developing players.
The NBA's problems start in the commissioner's office. Why does he make the big bucks? High school teams require their players to be able to dribble ... not so in the NBA. Not only is nothing called, they're allowed the Euro-Step. The lunatics are running the asylum.
Agreed, the commissioner needs to step in. Businessmen are taught to maximize revenues not just lower expenses, yet the Chicago market gets an owner who fails to do this for decades? And you know Young executives are brought up to make trades. Yet the Bulls executive can't. And worse he euro-negotiates.
And yet the Bulls practically fill their stadium for every game and are among the league’s attendance leaders. But agreed, they need a few good moves and another pick or two. They're working on it.
Brutal. But can't argue with it.
Reinsdorf has paid $8 million in luxury taxes over 24 years, which is a little more than 1/10th of what the high-rolling big market Milwaukee Bucks will pay in 2025 alone.
No need to pull a muscle imagining castles in the sky. Move that team 90 minutes south and it would be the biggest thing in the NBA.
The league likes Reinsdorf when it comes time for collective bargaining negotiations, he's like showing up at an arms control summit with John Bolton and Curtis LeMay on your side of the table. His psychosexual urge to crush labor is probably a net benefit to the other owners but of increasingly limited utility, particularly when he's been the most significant beneficiary of the penalties he's argued for. We're following a sports team that is really just a front for a board room made up of dead guys and lawyers representing trusts now. We're not even into the fact this guy wants us to build a 3rd stadium for him and has already dangled out the threat of moving one of his shitty teams.
I'm sorry but we're going to boo his widow too.
I think the most plausible explanation is that it's nothing idiosyncratic about the NBA at all. Ratings for pretty much everything legacy that isn't the NFL are depressed. So a good explanation would probably have to cover all that shit as well.
I obviously get this post's motivation for expansion... but the NBA's really confuses me. Every CBA negotiation in my lifetime featured at least one proclamation by the NBA that like 20 of the 30 teams aren't profitable. Why would they think the marginal teams will be better than those 20 profit sink holes?
I also wonder if expansion serves the tastes of Adam Silver personally, and what I guess I'll call NBA nerds (::raises hand::) broadly, but neglects the tastes of marginal fans. Like, I don't think marginal fans like parity? And I'm not sure NBA podcasters want to hear this, but I think marginal NBA fans love dynasties. And would basically like to see LeBron vs Steph in the finals till the sun explodes.
I also think the NBA seems to have been trying to dampen player movement? This works for NBA nerds (::raises hand::) who lament that people care more about trade rumors than the actual game. But... marginal fans really like player movement? I think that's true.
But whatever. More you could say about what could nudge the needle of NBA popularity. I still go back to the first point I made. That's probably the issue. The Bulls issue probably requires a kind of wetwork solution. I bet the NBA Cup sponsor knows plenty of those guys, so it's probably a phone call or two away, Adam.
There is always a majority on the side of expansion: the player's association will never be opposed to 30 new jobs and a significant number of owners want the fees (Jerry has historically had an intense craving for those beautiful outside-my-market fees.) The rest of the owners want more buyers, driving up the valuation of their properties, and, finally, these deals are no longer "just" for a franchise and a logo and free all-star game tix. Every new franchise will involve a stadium that is really the centerpiece of a broader real estate development, now with on-site gambling to boot. This shit is now so far removed from even 20 years ago. The Lasrys bought into Milwaukee not because they love the team or wanted to deliver a championship (thought that was nice, well done everyone!) but for the stadium and the development around it. They multiplied their investment manyfold over just 10 years by putting that together, sold the team at the first opportunity but kept their interests in adjacent real estate around it.
The actually *team* is reduced to a kind of abstraction in these plans. They could be a soccer team if it made the numbers work. It could be a site for public executions for that matter. They'll throw out the rah-rah shit to get the rubes high and sometimes it will even work (Milwaukee, maybe Phoenix?) but it's almost beside the point. It's a pretty weird evolution and the future looks increasingly like a cyberpunk novel where denizens of the future ChicagoZone organize themselves into murderous roller gangs defending the honor of Coke vs. the Pepsi tribe.
Is Christian Slater available?
Ok look, I just think if the NBA is going to act this much like an American university, then they should also get some kind of tax-exempt status.
Nielson Ratings are an outdated measure of fan engagement in my opinion. One reason is that it neglects the growth of and revenue stream from the global audience. Second reason, somewhat related, is the popularity and revenue of streaming games. NBA Season Pass subscriptions have grown tremendously. Also, a lot of people like me (a Bulls fan in Massachusetts) can stream their home team out-of-market. This consumer market was non-existent to negligible not long ago. This is why there's no "ratings crisis" in the eyes of Adam Silver and other NBA owners and executives. Just my take.
Nielsen is not a good measure of fan engagement. It is, however, one of the few data points that doesn't originate from the NBA itself. The claim that NBA Season Pass subscriptions have "grown tremendously" is one of those: the NBA doesn't release its numbers (and holds TNT, which actually does most of the operations for League Pass, to the same silence), just a press release noting a simple percentage marking "growth." No details, and no indication of how many new subscribers are from free offers and bundling (which all the streaming companies did for several years to boost user numbers, but as public companies had an obligation to disclose this which the NBA does not). The NBA would have every reason to do this entering into bidding for their next broadcasting contract.
If the revenue was great, I think they'd publish that too, for the same reasons relating to new negotiations. As it is League Pass, NBATV, NBA dot com, etc. are just tucked into the Amazon deal almost without being more than a footnote.
I don't think it's wrong, it's just only part of the picture. I think there are fewer fans of teams rather than players, and if you don't have any attachment to a team, you probably don't care enough to watch a full game for the few highlights of your favorite player that you actually care about. You could watch the ending of today's Knicks/Spurs games within minutes of it ending without paying a thing. That, I think, is where a lot of the fan engagement "escaped" to. A lot of the other reasons really point to this same conclusion: that most people don't watch full games or even want to. This seems really different than the NFL.
Man, I am watching this San Antonio/Knicks game and it is freakin' dire. The basketball is fine enough but, good god, there are a lot of commercials. I know you can point to literally any other American sport and say it is the same, but this is not true for soccer or rugby. I cannot watch a freakin' pfizer commercial that lasts a full two minutes in the middle of a match. Life is too short.
This is why I rarely ever watch sports live anymore. I usually start them far enough behind that I'm able to catch up by the end of the game by fast forwarding through the commercials.
Heard this a lot around the Olympics. It was a totally different and 1000% improved viewing experience.
Yes, very much so. Every time I switch back to American sports I can't do it.
I think the amount of time dedicated to stoppage is up, but I also think that the cadence of commercials has changed and that has a lot to do with it. Somehow the cheesier ads of the 90's matched the flow of the game better than these dire pharmaceutical ads. Who wants to be reminded that this is a dying nation during a timeout?
I know that the NBA will never do anything "good" but if they matched the European style with fewer games and more reasonable ad breaks, all of this hand-wringing would go away pretty quickly. A basketball team in a European league essentially spends all week preparing for their next opponent. The importance of individual games are much higher so there are no nights off and a lot higher frequency for "good wins" in the regular season. Even if you don't win a trophy you can still point to some real successes and great nights, This just gets lost if you are playing 82 games and spend the first half of the season working yourself into shape for the playoffs.
I think these conversations that are happening right now about declining popularity (as screamface YouTube thumbnail as some of the arguments are) are helpful. For years the solution was basically to (a) manipulate rules to increase scoring and (b) fuck labor, because fuck labor. I don't think that's gonna work this time.
The problem is that the notion that Adam Silver is in any way independent or responsible for the long-term integrity of the game is largely a coping mechanism. He works for the owners. The NBA as an organization works for them. We can have these conversations all we want but no one with any power is incentivized to think in the long term. And a more reasonable schedule goes directly against the short-term profits of both the players and the owners.
Silver has intervened in a bunch of things that as far as I can tell nobody ever asked for. The common denominator of the in-season tournament, play-in games and splitting the draft into two days (despite there only being 60 picks, fewer than any sport) is that they created packages with more ad inventor to sell. I mean all three of these created official programming out of nothing. So there is undoubtedly gonna be no reprieve from that. They're actually creating exhibition games that don't count to sell ads on them, which seems like some kind of taboo in sports.
shoulda watched the Disney+ cartoon broadcast, it was ad free! And Donald Duck doing Mikal Bridges moves, really wild stuff
Hawks game thread
https://open.substack.com/chat/posts/36e0c297-56b7-487a-b6d6-a2a1b63f4e00?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2bo