The 2024-25 NBA season begins in the midst of an era of change — renewing a new round of media rights deals, a year removed from a new collective bargaining agreement, with its defending champion about to go on the market. There are other changes on the horizon, with expansion likely to come and the growing internationalization of the sport inevitable.
Below, Sporty staff breaks down where the world’s second-most valuable sports league stands in six aspects of its business.
New League Economics
The NBA’s financial model began to shift closer to the NFL’s last decade, when its television deal tripled rights fee payments to teams. It will accelerate after this year’s 11-year, $76 billion deal, which increases the average annual payout by more than 150%. The financial gap between the top and bottom clubs is narrowing as league handouts become a bigger part of the overall revenue pie. This transformation and the international opportunities that will be shared are why the price of “admission” to an NBA franchise has doubled over the past four years.
Players share in the increase, as the salary cap is tied to basketball-related revenue, which aims for a roughly 50-50 split of BRI between owners and players. The cap rose just 3.3% this season after back-to-back years of 10% gains. The cap should increase by a maximum of 10% each year for the foreseeable future, moving above $300 million by the 2032-33 season with contracts worth more than $100 million per year. Steph Curry has the highest salary in the NBA this season at $55.8 million. -Kurt Badenhausen
The next sale of the franchise
In early July, less than two weeks after the Boston Celtics won their NBA-record 18th title, the Grousbeck family shocked the NBA by announcing they were putting the team up for sale. Patriarch Irving Grousbeck is about 90 years old and his family decided to liquidate his most valuable asset. They led a group that paid $360 million for the team in 2002; it is now worth more than $5 billion.
Since that announcement, the process has moved forward – albeit slowly. The ownership group hired a pair of banks to run the process, and SportyHis understanding is that the “data room” was set to open right at the beginning of the season. This is the point at which potential buyers can review the team’s finances, starting with their due diligence.
The Celtics will break the record for the highest valuation in an NBA control sale (currently $4 billion), but with how much? will be a closely watched question. The team has a lot of money committed to its stars, is a tenant in its arena, and new NBA media deals have been signed. This sale will be a good litmus test for sports ratings across the industry. -Eben Novy-Williams
Possible expansion
NBA commissioner Adam Silver previously said he would turn his attention to expansion after the league finalizes its future plans for media rights. This summer, the league signed a package deal. So the conversation is back on the table: When will the league expand?
“We’re not ready yet,” Silver said in September. “There’s certainly interest in the process, (but) we’re not there yet in terms of making any specific decisions about markets, or even frankly to expand.”
Former Seattle Supersonics fans would like to know the answer, as residents hope a franchise will return to Puget Sound after their club moved to Oklahoma City in 2008. Rumors have swirled that Seattle and Las Vegas are potentially the two cities future of the NBA. Meanwhile, ownership groups, including one led by Vegas Golden Knights owner Bill Foley, are eager to get involved if the league greenlights a team in Sin City.
The NBA, which last expanded in 2004, is taking a calculated approach to the matter. Silver has highlighted the complexities of league expansion, including the sale of equity in the league and how adding teams would affect recently signed media deals. -Eric Jackson
A lame duck media season
Unless you’re one of the advertisers who will be spending a total of $1.3 billion on in-game inventory between now and the NBA Finals, there’s no point in sweating the league’s TV ratings this season. The final campaign under the nine-year, $24 billion legacy deal with ESPN and Disney’s ABC and Warner Bros.’ TNT. Discovery will also mark the last time the NBA will draw most of its impressions from the dying basic cable universe, which makes 2024-25 the lamest of ducks. (Imagine Oregon’s mascot zipping around the Eugene campus on a mobility scooter and you’re about halfway there.)
That’s not to say the NBA’s swan song as a prime cable offering won’t do numbers; last season, the three major TV partners averaged 1.6 million viewers per game, which is about where things stood at the close of 2022-23 … and 2021-22. And while overall shipments are down nearly 20% in the last 10 years, that’s largely a function of the league’s overreliance on the underwhelming cable package, which as of 2019 has shed 40% of its customer base. .
Welcoming NBC back into the fold after a hiatus of more than two decades, the NBA is poised for a major broadcast boost once the 11-year, $76 billion media package begins next fall. Comcast’s over-the-air flagship will air about 50 regular-season games on Thursdays and Sundays after the NFL, a switching platform that automatically expands the league’s reach from about 15.5 million households. None of this suggests that TV ratings will ever reach the dizzying heights of the Jordan era again — that ship has sailed and all hands have gone missing — but a 12% improvement, to 1.8 million viewers per window, is not remarkable. of the realm of possibility.
One caveat to keep in mind as the NBA reduces its reliance on the shrinking cable package: The league still leans heavily on a man who will turn 40 at the end of the year, as LeBron James and the Lakers in 2023-24 accounted for seven . of the 10 most watched games of the regular season. Another guaranteed draw, Steph Curry, is 36 years old. Until the younger guys step up and at least one budding superstar can make a case to succeed James as the face of the league, the spoils of the NBA’s great retro movement may take some time to pop. – Anthony Crupi
The official debates are repeated
The official has been a point of contention, likely since the first time one of James Naismith’s students complained about a phone call in 1891.
Last season, NBA officials began calling approximately four fewer fouls per game after the All-Star break. The league says it will remain the status quo in 2024-25 as players adjust to a slightly more physical and free-flowing style of play.
However, there has been one rule change: During replay challenges involving out-of-bounds decisions, referees will now be able to retroactively call contact fouls that contributed to the stoppage. In part, the update is a response to the controversial plays at the end of Game 2 of the Western Conference Finals and Game 3 of the NBA Finals. –Jacob Feldman
Historical equality
For the first time in NBA history, six different franchises have won the last six championships. “We are witnessing unprecedented parity in the NBA,” deputy commissioner Mark Tatum told the media on Tuesday.
This is by design. The league’s collective bargaining agreement, which took effect in July 2023, limits the roster-building abilities of teams whose spending on player salaries exceeds certain thresholds above the salary cap. These rules make it difficult for teams with talented rosters to keep those cores together for more than a few years. We have already seen the effects of the impending restrictions; right after a conference finals run, the Minnesota Timberwolves traded All-Star Karl-Anthony Towns in part because his contract would become too expensive to stay under the dreaded “second apron” threshold.
The defending champion Celtics are poised for a repeat as they bring back their entire rotation. And yet, their 3-to-1 title odds are still less than any preseason favorite in the 2010s. After this season, Boston’s finances become murky, with multiple extensions that would take their payroll plus luxury tax bill in the $500 million range combined.
The era of dynasties may be over, and that’s exactly what commissioner Adam Silver wants. – Lev Akabas