The NBA’s new streaming service is a step in the right direction

There are so many good storylines in the NBA right now. The Lakers and Bucks are titans, the Clippers could probably beat either of them, and everyone is tired of the Rockets. 

Unfortunately, cord-cutting has left many sports fans out in the cold. If you don’t at least have a cable login, your options are usually to go to a sports bar, pay a lot of money for a league-wide streaming package, or break the law. 

One nice surprise this year, though, is that the NBA is offering a band-aid of sorts for this problem. You can now subscribe to NBA TV, the league’s proprietary TV network, for $6.99 per month or $60 per year. 

It’s a novel approach relative to other major sports leagues, and one that I think everyone else should emulate. In a fractured, imperfect media landscape, the NBA’s new streaming tier is a glimpse of hope for a better future.

What makes this different?

The NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL all have their own cable TV networks, sometimes only included in a more expensive sports package. Aside from original programming and broadcasts of classic games, the main appeal for each of these networks is that they occasionally air live games you can’t watch elsewhere.

The new NBA TV subscription is by far the most affordable and straightforward way to get one of those channels. MLB and NHL both have comprehensive packages that cost north of $100 for a full season, while the NFL Network is firmly hidden behind cable access. All you have to do for NBA TV is pay a comparatively small price to watch games on a web browser or pretty much any device with an app store.

Image: Noah Graham/NBAE via Getty Images

Since there are usually anywhere between three and six NBA TV-exclusive live games each week, it’s a pretty good deal. They usually aren’t as high-profile as the national games on ESPN or TNT, but talent is spread so evenly throughout the league right now that there’s a good reason to watch every team except the Warriors.

The only real issue here is that archaic broadcast regulations rear their head every once in a while. If one of the teams in your local market is playing on NBA TV, the game will be blacked out. To be frank, that really sucks and makes less sense than ever considering how many people use streaming for everything. 

I couldn’t care less about the Knicks, but the Nets are going to have Kevin Durant next year. Let me watch!

It’s cheap, does that mean it’s bad?

Let’s be honest: Sometimes things are cheap because they aren’t very good. Disney+ had a ton of hype partly because it costs next to nothing, and then it launched without a “Continue Watching” feature while old episodes of The Simpsons were unwatchable.

NBA TV’s streaming option mostly avoids those pitfalls, thankfully. It doesn’t have the exact same interface across all devices, but the web browser version is a pretty good indication of what happens once you log in on any device.

You can start watching whatever is airing on NBA TV, see the upcoming schedule, find out which games are airing on NBA TV next, and watch on-demand versions of original shows and classic games, like the NBA Finals from 2000 until now. Yes, the first one I pressed play on was Game 7 of the 2016 Finals.

I am something of a stickler for sports streaming quality, and NBA TV is firmly “okay” in this regard. When watching on a PS4 or Xbox One, it streams at a high framerate that looks basically indistinguishable from a TV broadcast. Great! 

Unfortunately, the same isn’t true for browser and mobile streams. I could only get those to stream at 30 frames per second, which in layman’s terms means it doesn’t look as smooth as sports should. It’s still perfectly watchable, and plenty of other apps like CBS All Access and NBC Sports have the same restriction, but I wish it were better.

But other than that minor gripe, you get exactly what you pay for and it works. Not bad.

What is the NBA doing right that other leagues are doing wrong?

The problem with trying to stream sports is the problem with trying to watch anything nowadays: It’s not always possible to get everything you want without just paying for cable, which is exactly what we’re all trying to avoid. Modern living is a maelstrom of shared passwords and trying to remember which service has which show at any given time.

This is also true of professional sports. All four major North American leagues have an expensive package to let you watch all out-of-market regular season games, which is great for those who can afford it. The NBA, NHL, and MLB will let you pay a lesser fee to subscribe to a single team for a season, but not the stodgy and backwards NFL.

With its new, low-end streaming tier, the NBA is offering something none of the other leagues are: A way to keep up without paying too much. You don’t get everything, but you get enough for it to be worthwhile. If you find yourself with a little more money, you can easily upgrade your account to watch more games.

Giving fans an entry-level option may seem like a small thing, but it’s huge for some sports fans. There’s real comfort in sitting down and turning on NBA TV to watch a game or catch the day’s highlights.

It is by no means revolutionary for the NBA to give us another way to spend money on its product, but until sports broadcasts are considered public utilities in my ideal utopian future, I’ll take even small steps in the right direction.