{"id":89771,"date":"2023-12-11T15:30:34","date_gmt":"2023-12-11T20:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=89771"},"modified":"2024-09-01T09:54:26","modified_gmt":"2024-09-01T13:54:26","slug":"opinion-brad-millington-discusses-the-nbas-inaugural-in-season-tournament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2023\/12\/opinion-brad-millington-discusses-the-nbas-inaugural-in-season-tournament\/","title":{"rendered":"OPINION: Brad Millington discusses the NBA’s inaugural in-season tournament"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article written by Brad Millington, Associate Professor of Sport Management at Brock University, originally appeared in The Conversation<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The National Basketball Association\u2019s inaugural In-Season Tournament wraps up this weekend. The tournament kicked off on Nov. 3 and will culminate in a championship game between the Indiana Pacers and Los Angeles Lakers on Dec. 9.<\/p>\n

The tournament is something\u00a0NBA commissioner Adam Silver has reportedly wanted to implement for years\u00a0for a variety of reasons. One obvious potential benefit of the tournament is to generate revenue, as the Women\u2019s National Basketball Association has already done with its own tournament, the\u00a0Commissioner\u2019s Cup.<\/p>\n

According to Silver, inspiration for the tournament lies in\u00a0international soccer cup tournaments. A famous analogue is the\u00a0FA Cup in English football, which dates back to the 19th century.<\/p>\n

But if you tuned into one of the In-Season Tournament games, you might have been surprised by what you saw \u2014 not the game itself, but the design of the court.<\/p>\n

For tournament games, beige hardwood courts have been swapped out for\u00a0shockingly colourful displays. Each team has its own design. The Phoenix Suns\u2019 court is purple and teal from edge to edge. Lime green features prominently for the New Orleans Pelicans.<\/p>\n

Whether tasteful or gaudy, the courts have this in common: they grab your attention.<\/p>\n

Fighting for attention<\/strong><\/p>\n

The In-Season Tournament is playing out under the unique conditions of our present-day attention economy.\u00a0The attention economy\u00a0is the quest to monetize attention \u2014 most notably, by capturing and holding attention so as to sell it to advertisers.<\/p>\n

Sport\u00a0has a place of privilege in the attention economy, since sporting events are best watched live. This is beneficial to sports leagues and event organizers (who sell media rights) and, in turn, to sports broadcasters (who sell time for commercials during breaks in play).<\/p>\n

But attention is a limited resource. The competition to seize our attention is fierce. A basketball broadcast now faces a long list of competing choices for viewers: other live-TV options, the bottomless content of social media, the entire Netflix catalogue and so on.<\/p>\n

Not only that, our communication technologies call out to us. A push notification on your phone is an attention request. It\u2019s an app saying, \u201cHey, look over here! I have something that\u2019s worth your time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sports are evolving under these very conditions.<\/p>\n

Sports in the attention economy<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sports are changing in many ways in the attention economy. One option for sport leagues is to liven the pace of play. Major League Baseball\u00a0embarked on such an effort this past season\u00a0by introducing a pitch clock to keep pitchers and batters from taking too much time between pitches.<\/p>\n

While this might shorten the game and leave less time for commercials, the potential upside is a snappier product \u2014 and perhaps, more engaged consumers.<\/p>\n

Sports betting is a way of capturing attention as well. Both Canada and the United States have opened their doors to legal sports betting in recent years. This has come with backing from major sports leagues (despite\u00a0past instances of opposition).<\/p>\n

A\u00a0recent advertisement\u00a0from the sports betting operator FanDuel takes aim at \u201cgarbage time\u201d \u2014 a phrase that denotes the meaningless final moments of a lopsided game when the outcome is already decided. FanDuel sees an upside to garbage time because there can still be betting outcomes on the line. Will the favoured team cover the point spread?<\/p>\n

While the FanDuel advertisement doesn\u2019t explicitly put it this way, the implication is this: sports betting is a way to hold viewers\u2019 attention in circumstances where, in the past, they might have turned their focus elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Changing the stakes<\/strong><\/p>\n

Another option in the attention economy is to restructure sports competition to change the stakes. This is what the NBA\u2019s In-Season Tournament accomplishes.<\/p>\n

For the NBA and its broadcast partners, the In-Season Tournament could squeeze more value out of early-season games. There has\u00a0long been talk\u00a0that the NBA\u2019s 82-game regular season might be too long.<\/p>\n

Like the WNBA Commissioner\u2019s Cup, however, results in the NBA In-Season Tournament also contribute to regular season standings (excluding the championship game). Thus, instead of shortening the season, the In-Season Tournament gives regular season games additional stakes, and additional reason for excitement.<\/p>\n

As\u00a0one sports writer put it:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal is modest, merely to ramp up interest in the league during a time when the NBA is mostly in an attention desert.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reasons to keep watching<\/strong><\/p>\n

For players and teams, there are financial and competitive motivations for the tournament: $500,000 apiece for winning players and a chance to hoist the newly-unveiled NBA Cup.<\/p>\n

For fans, there is new reason to make early-season games appointment viewing, or at least to stop channel surfing at the sight of a flashy court. Indeed, a purple and teal floor screams out, \u201cHey, this is different, don\u2019t touch that dial!\u201d This is court design as push notification.<\/p>\n

So far, the In-Season Tournament has garnered positive reviews. Players and teams seem to be taking it seriously, and there is\u00a0initial evidence\u00a0that tournament games are bolstering viewership.<\/p>\n

Whether the tournament lasts as a yearly initiative is likely down to the product on the court, and not the courts themselves. In the attention economy, capturing attention is just the first step. From there, you have to hold on tight.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Associate Professor of Sport Management Brad Millington wrote a piece recently published in The Conversation about the NBA’s inaugural In-Season Tournament and the attention economy. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":89772,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36,7,6],"tags":[11163,7488,57,5512],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89771"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89771"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89779,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89771\/revisions\/89779"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}