[ARETE] The Digital NBA, Steven Secular

Sat Nov 4 11:05:44 CDT 2023

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All,
Please find below (and hopefully attached) Prebam Philipson's review of Steven Secular's The Digital NBA
Thank you,
Duncan

VALUES STREAMING FROM COUCH TO COURT – book review by Preben K Philipson

THE DIGITAL NBA – How the world’s savviest league brings the court to our couch

by Steven Secular

The NBA is not an administrative basketball federation. Period. “In NBA sport is secondary to the interests of media content and capital in the multiplatform era” (p.3). This is the main claim of Steven Secular’s The Digital NBA. Whereas you may not be extremely surprised by this claim, you are again and again throughout the book convinced of the targeted and strategic work NBA has put behind their ambitions since the early 1980s.

One of many examples of the strategic decisions is from the 2017-18 NBA season. The league decided to cut the number of timeouts per game from 18 to 14 and also reduced the number of timeouts during the final two minutes from three to two.

And why was that? Everybody around the game were aware of the time-outs’ negative impact on pace and flow, and of course the positive impact on revenue from commercial breaks. But new data showed that many viewers behind a screen were switching channels during timeouts – and never returning! In contemporary them this would probably be named databased management.

NBA as global front runner

NBA is an extremely strong brand for the administration of professional American basketball, but The Digital NBA teaches us that NBA today functions much more as global media conglomerates in practice. Because media interest today is that important. Comparing ticket sales over mite, we find that in 1992 ticket sales were 50% of the NBA’s income, yet in 2019-20 they were down to just 20%.

It didn’t get this far overnight; the NBA have worked hard for this strategically since the 1980s, and this strategi has work special well in the global field. Where NBA is lagging behind in the domestic field with its peers MLB and NHL, NBA in the international media revenue produces a slam dunk year after year. Where MLB in 2019 had 50 million and NFL 120 million, NBA had 500 million dollar in global media revenue.

2019

NFL

MLB

NBA

Domestic media revenue

16 Billion $

10,7 Billion $

8,76 Billion $

Global media revenue

120 Million $

50 Million $

500 Million $

The Digital NBA shows that NBA’s executive office has come to “operate as a genuine global media conglomerate.” Examples of this are divisions such as “NBA China” and “NBA India” are functioning as distinct subsidiaries within the league’s corporate structure.

At the larger scale of NBAs income 15 percent of the leagues’ income in 2005 came from overseas, whereas by 2013 10 percent of the overall revenue came from international operations. Seemingly a small number, but one that again topped the performance of both NFL and MLB.

The book continues with examples of the results of the strategical initiatives. For instance, that since the launch of NBA.com 35 percent of the traffic had come from outside the US and the global success has worked partly because foreign-born players have brought with them an altogether more global audience. Marketing is also working in a different flow, because with the internet, the players are known as quickly around the world as they are known home.

The sporting triangle

Secular quotes Raymond Boyle and Richard Haynes for conceptualizing a sporting triangle between sport, television, and sponsors in which:

“Sport is strategically managed and marketed to produce maximum commercial yields for sports federations, media corporations, sponsors and advertising concerns”. (p.33)

The triangle could from Secular’s comments and quotes look like the one in the graphic, where maximum commercial yields for the three partners are in the center of the triangle.

The NBA has been wisely aware of the importance of the right partnerships at the right time and when to change them because of new conditions. In the field of existing vs upcoming media partners as well as the new opportunities made by decisions from neoliberal policy, communications technology and the new opportunities of self-distribution for the viewers.

-And: The television ecosystem that have connected viewing, integrating digital technology and socially networked communication with traditional practices.

-And: Streaming platforms, linear television and social media becoming integrated across television sets, smartphones, and laptops.

-And: Integrating Fantasy sports and betting.

Mediatization – the theoretical approach

Among several theories Steven Secular uses mediatization and concludes that “The term most appropriately describes the NBA’s similar efforts to manipulate basketball as media programming and its tendency to cater primarily to media interests in its directives” (p.5).

The term and concept of mediatization emerges from political communication scholarship. In terms of sport, it proposes that the changing structural relations between media and sports have developed to a point where sports institutions, leaders and practices are increasingly dependent upon media and conform to the logics of media production, distribution, and reception.

Danish professor Kirsten Frandsen is quoted for aptly using mediatization as a framework for describing the sport-media relationship, wherein sporting events encouraged media organizations “to bring the sports sphere and actions as close to the audience as possible “by “making use of the newest technologies – be it the telephone, at the beginning of the 20th century, or small portable cameras on athletes 100 years later” (p.5).

Kirsten Frandsen further explores the concept and examples of mediatization in her book Sport and Mediatization (2020), Routledge, New York. One of the main paradoxes she pinpoints is, that despite sport from early on has been a strong example of how media have become powerful agents of change, few have carried out empirical analyses!

Fransen carries out analyses herself on the Tour de France cycling race, sports federations, recreational mountain bikers etc., where digitalization, social media, sports activity, spectatorship and mobile devices are interconnected. Just as The Digital NBA shows us.

Steven Secular summarizes his book in the following powersentence:

“To understand the NBA, therefore, is to understand an increasingly integrated sports and media industry, the digitization of sports spectatorship, and the capitalization of cultural flows within a multiplatform media ecosystem”. (p.11)

You recognize this, when your devices are used to both watch sport on different channels and streaming services, for live betting and management of your fantasy team connected to your social media and the integrated and changing social interactions.

What is gained? What is lost?

The Digital NBA serves profound analyses and documentation of the development of the NBA in the field of media interest and commercialization. And it does so thoroughly and reliably. But where you gain, you always lose. For others to complete the picture you might ask, what is lost in this medialization, where sport organizations become media?

One answer comes from Danish journalist and debating editor Poul Albret, who back in the 1990s developed the Bermuda Triangle of Sport Journalism: the sponsors, the media and the top sport. He concluded from a severe Danish journalistic scandal, that it was the independent and critical journalism that was lost in the Bermuda Triangle of Sport Journalism.

When the sport is the media the motivation and interest to be critical is in many ways lost.  

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