The NBA it just broke its own supersonic barrier: for the first time in its history it exceeded 10 billion dollars in revenue in a single season. Nothing that was not known: before the start of the 2021-2022 cycle, the commissioner Adam Silver he had predicted reaching that number in a phase of takeoff after two short and pandemic-altered seasons. These numbers indicate a recovery of the NBA with respect to the 2020-2021 season, in which its income fell around 35 percent.
American basketball surpassed a goal that had already crossed the NFL, which posted $11 billion in revenue, up 12 percent from the previous year. The NBA revenue data was confirmed last July 12 by Silver at the league board meeting, where the “play-in” format for qualifying in each conference for the playoffs with a system was permanently approved. that keeps the franchises that occupy the ninth and tenth place with possibilities. The modality that emerged during the shortened seasons due to the pandemic demonstrates the NBA’s ability to turn any kind of innovation into profit: that sports expectation translated into encouraging new audience ratings.
In the 2018-2019 season, the NBA peaked at $8.9 billion in revenue. In the breakdown of the 10 billion dollars reached in the season that saw the Golden State Warriors champion, the 1,460 million dollars that the NBA entered from sponsorships and agreements with different companies stand out.
Items such as technology and cryptocurrencies were the main sources of advertising revenue, with agreements that exceeded 170 million dollars from business with technology companies such as Google and Microsoft, while crypto companies ranked second with payouts ranging from $100 million to $150 million.
Despite the bad news that arrives regarding the price of crypto assets, that item was in the 43rd position last season as a source of advertising revenue. The rest of the brands that sponsor the NBA come from different industries: banking, telecommunications, apparel and equipment, beer, financial services, gambling, automotive and retail. The advertising income that makes up the floor of the agreements with sponsors does not fall below 70 million dollars for each item.
Newly in 2024 the NBA must negotiate its broadcast rights for the United States and globally. Since 2014, those rights have been shared between ESPN and Turner Sports, which will have assured the NBA, by the time those contracts end, an accumulated amount of 24 billion dollars over ten years. The recent negotiation between the technology company Apple with the MLS -with an agreement for 250 million dollars per season, very far from what the NBA earns annually-, opened the game of consultations on any news that may arise for the new cycle of sale of rights.
The NBA still doesn’t talk about those issues, but when its deal platform is analyzed, Apple doesn’t appear within the world’s largest basketball landscape at the moment, as it does with the NFL. Giants like Google, -also YouTube-, Meta and Microsoft already have their “plots” in the NBA. There is always room for one more.
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How the NBA broke the $10 billion mark in revenue for the first time in its history.