Business & Basketball – Trail Blazers TV Ratings
Working in the NBA
Occasionally, I’ll dip my toe into the team I worked with for 15 seasons. But only on occasion because I want to be careful with what I dive into Trail Blazers related and also because the team is generally not that interesting, hence the ratings nosedive.
After my time with the team ended, I didn’t watch much basketball at all but I still followed what the Trail Blazers were up to because… Damian Lillard. I rooted for his success. I still wanted to see him win a championship and hopefully bring that trophy back to RipCity.
But seeing a television ratings decline of 50% is more than just one thing. It’s not just losing the face of the franchise. It’s not just the product on the court. It’s not just the TV Deal. It’s all of the above. The important thing for NBA franchises is to know what direction they are headed so they can calculate accordingly, both on the basketball and business operation sides.
One of the more interesting basketball ratings stories to me is the story of the Charlotte Bobcats. Bob Johnson had amassed his fortune as co-founder of BET. And like many businessmen who buy NBA teams, he replicated his business model to the NBA. Ask Howard Shultz how that works? Running an NBA team like a coffee shop just doesn’t quite work the same. In a normal business, the Owner is the star, the face of the franchise, the everything. In the NBA business, the Owner has to cater to the player. The player (employee) is the star, the face of the franchise and the Owner needs to take a back seat accordingly. You can ask Donald Sterling how the Owner as face of the franchise works out.
Bob Johnson put the Bobcats on Cable TV assuming fans would be thrilled to pay money to watch a local NBA team. The fans never got engaged (have they yet?) because they weren’t going to pay for a low-end product that they had no ties to. Bob had to sell the team and viewership-wise, the team has still never gained traction.
I’m reminded of a story I believe was told by Malcolm Gladwell. The NHL was bringing hockey to Dallas. So what did they do? They didn’t start charging high prices on tickets or putting the team on an exclusive TV network, they built youth hockey rinks all around the city.
They didn’t charge people for something they likely weren’t all that interested in.
They gave away something to cultivate interest and fandom in the next generation.
Because I’m still in Portland, I hear both sides of the Trail Blazers ratings nosedive. The team has a bad deal with Root Sports and no one wants to pay for it. And no Damian Lillard.
And in all situations, there’s nuance. It’s not one or the other, it’s both, it’s all. It’s a miscalculation by the franchise in what their direction is. If you are going to put a mediocre to poor product on the court, you have to give it away and build interest in the young players you want the fanbase to buy into. For example, Duop Reath, what an incredible story. I’ll root for that, but I’m not going to pay for it. You can’t raise ticket prices on a rebuild. You can’t hide the team on cable TV during a rebuild. The business operations side needs to know where the basketball operations side is headed so they can adjust accordingly.
Trail Blazers fans have complained about the TV package for as long as I have been around. But there is a difference between complaining but still purchasing it because there is a high-quality product on the court versus complaining about the TV deal and franchise. It’s not an either / or but a both / and.
As Jason Quick wrote recently, the Blazers have continued to ring the bell of hope. You can sell hope every season and hope to win the lottery. But fans will only pay for hope for so long.
If you look over the history of new GM’s, almost every single one wants to tear down the team and build it back up. It buys you time and job security as a GM and allows you to… sell hope.
But if you’re part of the business side, you might not want a full tear down. You need to sell tickets and television deals and you need, in this case, Damian Lillard, to do that. You have to have a face of the franchise to market and promote. To sell tickets, to sell merchandise, to negotiate TV deals.
The Trail Blazers straddled the fence for awhile by keeping the face of the franchise while tearing down the roster around him (but not being honest with themselves or fans as to whether it was a re-build / re-tool / or attempt to win).
An NBA team has to decide which direction they are going in so they know in what years they’re staying under the cap, when they’ll go over, when they’ll become a tax team, etc. All NBA teams have 1, 2, 3, 5, 10 year projections. And the business side acts accordingly by laying out their own projections and budgeting which plays into ticket prices and television deals.
With a re-building team, you want the city and fans to have as much access as possible to the team and players so you can build the ties that lead to being able to market, promote, raise ticket prices, and negotiate TV deals. A lack of access and lack of a quality product leads to the inverse and it can spell disaster. Just ask the Seattle SuperSonics.