NEW YORK — More than a year ago, NBA commissioner Adam Silver first broached the idea of letting fans purchase just the final minutes of an individual game rather than outlay for its entirety or even a full season-long subscription to League Pass.
The league tested that idea on Friday by offering the fourth quarter of games that night for 99 cents, and during partner Turner Sports’ launch event for its Bleacher Report Live OTT service on Tuesday, Silver outlined a more comprehensive inventory of microtransactions, permitting viewers to buy shorter durations of the game for a reduced price.
“I’m more focused on the entire game,” Silver said. “There’s no doubt there’ll be people who will see on social media there’s an exciting finish to a game and so they might be more inclined to watch the last five minutes, but I also think there’ll be an audience for people earlier in the evening who know, for whatever reason, they only have time during the first and second quarter to watch a game and don’t think it’s a good consumer proposition to have to buy a whole game.”
The NBA has been carving its League Pass into smaller segments for years, taking what is now a $199.99 package for every out-of-market game and offering all the games of one’s favorite team for $119.99 and then enabling single-game buys for $6.99. While the current testing has been limited to fourth quarters of games, Silver said next year’s League Pass — available on the new B/R Live service as well as the NBA app and NBA.com — will include a fuller array of options, with such increments as five or ten minutes. (Exact pricing is to be determined.)
Turner president David Levy hailed the availability of such piecemeal selections “one of the most innovative ideas that’s come out in quite some time.” Silver called this idea “snacking” and added, “It’s ultimately about serving the fans.”
Despite fears that the shorter-term options would cannibalize the season-long subscriptions, Silver said sales of the full-year League Pass continue to go up.
While the average NBA game lasts about two and a half hours, the average TV viewer watches only 50 minutes, Silver said, noting that the other pro sports leagues face comparable numbers.
“If we were designing these products from scratch today,” he said, “I’m not sure we would design them the same way because people’s attention spans are shorter.”
For that reason, the league approved a series of pace-of-play initiatives last winter, including a reduction in total timeouts by four and a modification of game flow with only two commercial breaks per quarter instead of three.
Turner and the NBA have co-managed the NBA Digital property for a decade, and Silver said that a streaming platform enables far more flexibility and variety of offerings, allowing the league to test and respond in real time on such features as price points.
“Over the years when we had League Pass on television, we were limited by the cable box infrastructure in terms of what we could do,” he said. “Over-the-top has just given us a lot more opportunities to create different packages for fans.”
Silver said the inspiration for the change came from the microtransactions that are common in modern video gaming. Similarly, he has spoken previously about drawing ideas from Twitch streams of esports that carry concurrent chatter and data. Silver said NBA games could be hosted on similar platforms with sales of merchandise, tickets or anything else, joking about partnering with local restaurants on one-click pizza delivery.
“I think you have a generation that’s used to being up-sold throughout a game,” he said. “It just creates more opportunities for people, and you have a captive and engaged audience, so why not give them more options in the same way you would in an arena?”
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Silver also likened the microtransaction game offerings to a retail store marking one item down on a huge sale just to get customers into the store; the hope is they’ll enjoy the experience and stay longer.
The commissioner also stressed that this low-priced endeavor is not strictly about revenue yield, but also about reaching a wider number of viewers.
“We didn’t begin this just as a business opportunity,” Silver said. “It began as an opportunity to engage more fans.”