NBA commissioner Adam Silver spends a lot of his time focused on trying to better understand emerging technology. When teams build new arenas or rethink the game-day experience, he wants them to realize that trying to get fans to disconnect from their smartphones is foolhardy.
“You want people to be fully engaged, but there also has to be a recognition that for those digital natives—as we’re calling them—it’s virtually impossible,” Silver said this week at the VenuesNow Conference in New York City. “It’s part and parcel of who they are, and I think we have to find ways to incorporate that digital existence into our league and recognize that, at the end of the day, what these leagues have become are social platforms unto themselves.”
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Silver urges leagues, teams, venue operators and players to think of arenas “as broadcast studios”—a portal through which the NBA can communicate with its 1.6 billion fans across the globe.
Even the fans inside the arenas can be thought of as narrators of an NBA a story, Silver says, and to that end he believes the venues should ensure that the wi-fi bandwidth can support the necessary connectivity.
“When those 18,000 people are holding up their smartphones, that imagery they’re creating will be stitched together and provide experiences,” he said.
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Silver also likened sports venues to “modern-day town halls” for their ability to congregate diverse groups of people for a common purpose.
But what do the venues of tomorrow promise for the fan experience?
“The best advice I can give is flexibility,” he said. “I sit in so many meetings where people act like they can predict the future, and they just can’t.”
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