NBATV Conspiracy

[Rich <rich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

If this long-time list lurker can chime in, I think this is exactly where
the league office wants to go. The poor offers that the league received when
the TV contract was last up for bid (a year or two ago), really annoyed Mr.
Stern, IMO, and resulted in the salary cap going down, which, I'm sure,
resulted in many complaints to the league office by the teams.

It seems to me that they've created NBATV as a response to this 'slight' by
the various networks. They're going to take 2 or 3 years to slowly get it
off the ground (by getting fans to request the channel from their
cable/satellite providers) and by the time the current TV contract is up,
they'll be ready to do exactly as you've described below: a few 'highlight'
games on national TV with rest available only on NBATV--excluding even local
carriers. Goodbye, FSNE.

This has already happened with the summer league games, which were available
on FSNE last summer, but weren't this summer.

By going this route, TV-related income will be known and partially
controllable, which should help keep the caps and thresholds and salaries
nicely on the rise--regardless of the quality of the product.

I won't go so far as to say that the LeBron hype is part of the plan, but 2
or 3 years from would probably be about the time, barring injury or
implosion, that he begins to dominate Jordan-style--which would be quite
convenient, don't you think?

Rich
(the other Rich D.)

> From: Kestutis.Kveraga@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Kestutis Kveraga)
> Reply-To: Kestutis.Kveraga@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (kestas)
> Date: 30 Jul 2003 12:03:20 EDT
> To: celtics@xxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: The Boston Celtics Mailing List Digest V10 #284
> 
> --- You wrote:
> However, I don't recall any of the following day replays being blacked out.
> Maybe that's Stern's next step in controlling all our TV's and squeezing
> every penny he can from NBA fans.
> --- end of quote ---
> 
> Yeah, how soon before NBATV is a stand-alone premium subscription channel and
> ALL games, except a few Lebron & Laker specials to attract the casual fan, are
> on NBATV, available only via a proprietary  satellite system called SternTV?
> Kestas