During a recent NBA press conference, NBA commissioner Adam Silver argued that anyone who can't keep up with the rising costs of subscriptions can still watch a lot for free because it's a "highlight sport."
Silver was asked about the costs of watching every game by a particular team during an NBA season, because it's become increasingly cost-prohibitive for some fans now the games are across several cable and streaming services. He responded by saying that there are a lot of games still on free broadcast television, and fans can keep up on social media because it's a "highlight sport."
"There's a huge amount of our content that people can essentially consume for free," he said. "I mean, this is very much a highlights-based sport. So Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, you name it. Any service, the New York Times, for that matter, to the extent that your content is not behind a paid firewall. There's an enormous amount of content out there. YouTube, another example that is advertising-based, that consumers can consume."
The comments were, understandably, met with outrage from NBA fans who have found it increasingly hard to get access to every game of their favorite team. It's also been argued that it's an insult to all the hard-working players in the league that an entire game can be distilled into just a two-minute highlight reel to be watched on social media.
Check out some of the reactions to Adam Silver's comments below.
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