The NBA has made strides in improving their viewer experience over the last couple of years, including the ability for consumers to pay for single games that are out of their market.
Now, Adam Silver says the league is looking into selling the final five minutes of a game for a small fee.
The commish recently sat in on a sports business innovation panel at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and briefly spoke about his vision for the NBA League Pass package.
“Certainly we’re going from a place where it was one price for an entire season of games. Now just in the last two years, we’ve made single games available,” Silver said of the NBA League Pass package. “But I think you’re going to get to the point where somebody wants to watch the last five minutes of the game, and they go click, they’ll pay a set price for five minutes as opposed to what they would pay for two hours of the game.”
“I think you’re going to hit the point where for example … you’re on a Twitter feed or you get an alert. I think there will be a lot more sophisticated alerts, and you’ll see, ‘I know Sue Bird, I like Sue Bird, Sue Bird’s going for a record-setting game.’ And then you’re going to go click, and then you’re going to get the game.”
He added: “ I think you’re going to take the same great content, and you’re just going to make it that much more available to people who want it.”
Essentially, this would be like the NBA's version of the NFL Redzone Channel, except you'd pay individually for small snippets instead of a flat rate for the entire channel all season.
ESPN's Darren Rovell has already ventured to guess that these final five minutes could sell for as little as 99 cents.