The NBA is coming back for the world to see in Disney World, and it will be the ride of a lifetime or maybe more
On June 6th, there was an announcement that spread throughout media that the NBPA (National Basketball Players Association) will approve a plan to resume the NBA season at Disney World. The NBA and Walt Disney will manage the remainder of the 2019–20 season at Disney World in Orlando, FL. According to the NY Times, “The plan calls for players to stay on the campus at Disney (not in theme parks), with daily testing for the coronavirus.”
To finalize this, the league still needs to finalize a deal with Disney to host the games at the Wide World of Sports complex in Orlando, Florida. The exciting part of all of this is how the COVID-19 crisis created a partnership between those two monsters, and now the NBA has the potential to elevate from one of the most popular sports leagues in the world to being number one. Let me explain how.
The NBA had to find a safe sports complex for creating that bubble and had to also, factor in costs. Which is where Disney first came into the picture. Disney is the league’s biggest customer, paying what analyst-estimated to be $1.4 billion a year to broadcast games on ESPN and ABC. Additionally, Disney is one of the only companies to have the resources to pull something like that off.
A few months ago, Adam Silver, the commissioner of the NBA, partnered up with Microsoft and introduced them as the official technology brand for the NBA. Under a new multi-year partnership, we saw how the NBA aims for a better direct-to-consumer experience
The Media Experience
The points, highlights, and the high-volume amount of games in a year is how we consume media in 2020. Before the COVID-19 crisis, the NBA was already partnered with startup companies from the sports-tech world to improve fan engagement and also had a customization plan implemented to become the number one sports league worldwide. Nowadays, the NBA has been the best choice for our social media\tech era and will be the leading cause of change regarding the way we consume sports entertainment.
I’m not a basketball analyst (even not close), and I don’t have any professional commentary for who and how the league will end. Still, I can say that the COVID-19 crisis has influenced how the league will resume and how it will end if you add in playing after such a long break at a closed-off location without any fans, it’s a difficult situation even for these mega athletes and a total game-changer. But, what is clear for all teams is no one will have any clear advantage.
Due to a lack of fan’s presence in the NBA, rumors arose of the possibility that other tech or media giants like Warner’s Sports, Comcast, and Sony would try to partner up with the NBA. Disney knew that action had to be made, which is why Disney partnered up with the NBA. Personally, I can’t wait to see Giannis play with Mickey Mouse ears while LeBron and Donald Duck trash talk him from the stands. We probably won’t see a lot of Disney advertising.
But, just think of the brand value a picture like that can bring to Disney. And not only that, if you factor in the NBA continuing its season at Disney resorts, it would give the organization a reason to put employees back to work and to share the marketing message that it is safe to visit and generate facility fees and hotel spending. You have to also think about how Disney can leverage from the NBA partnership as done when they purchased Pixar when Disney “used” Pixar’s computer-animated character and innovative way of thinking on its vast network.
There are still a few questions that have left been left unanswered. For example, what would happen if a player tests positive? When and how is the next season going to be? and so on, Whatever the outcome though. I think that the NBA and Walt Disney will find a creative way to solve any problem that will arise. The NBA and Walt Disney are the perfect fit, and to my way of thinking it’s a “win-win situation” for the long run, both will benefit from this partnership no matter what’s the deal between them looks right now.
The Future Seems Bright
To create such a compelling customer experience or in that case, the fan experience is what Disney knows best how to do. Disney will gain the NBA fans, viewers, and more from that the fantastic value as the number one basketball league in the world and one of the most popular sports leagues in the world.
There are some brands that, if we just hear their names like Disney, Nike, Adidas, and more, get you excited immediately and get that visceral feeling about it, now with the digitalization and innovation in sports. We, the Sport’s Consumers, will have that as well.
We probably won’t forget such a unique ending in the sports world for a very long time, not just as sports fans, but as Consumers of Entertainment.
sources: LA Times, NY Times and Yahoo sport
