If the local NBA team has the league’s highest scoring offense, one of its most dynamic young stars and a surprise early inside track on a playoff berth …
… Only nobody can watch …
… Does it make a sound?
I bought NBA League Pass this season mostly because of the Boston Celtics — or, as reigning league MVP Joel Embiid called them last week, “the best team in the NBA, by far” — but also because I’m an NBA fan in general and I wanted to be able to see all the best of what the greatest professional sports league on the planet has to offer this season.
Only problem is, I still can’t see it all.
When the San Antonio Spurs and ballyhooed rookie Victor Wembanyama came to Indy a week ago, I didn’t have the luxury of attending in person, but I definitely wanted to at least catch a glimpse. So imagine my surprise when, at halftime of what turned out to be a thrilling Celtics-Timberwolves game that same night, I tried to switch over and got denied like I tried to shoot a jumper over the 7-foot-4 Wembanyama himself:
This game is not available … because it is being broadcast on a channel in your local market. NBA TV and League Pass subscribers can listen live or watch 3 days after the game.
Okay, so League Pass blocks its subscribers from viewing any games that are being broadcast on national (ESPN, TNT, etc.) or local TV. In theory, we shouldn’t need League Pass for such games because those games are all available on our cable and/or streaming packages, right?
Right?
Wrong.
Almost every Pacers game airs locally on Bally Sports Midwest, the regional sports network contracted to cover the team on a nightly basis. But here’s the thing — Diamond Sports Group, the parent company for all of the regional Bally Sports networks, filed for bankruptcy in March, leaving the existing contracts in limbo.
Earlier this month, the NBA reached a deal with Diamond that will allow the Bally networks still in control of NBA broadcasts to carry their teams through the 2023-24 season, with the league taking over those rights when the season ends.
So Bally Sports Midwest — which also carries the Indiana Fever and the St. Louis Blues — controls the Pacers for the rest of this season. Only problem is that depending on how you digest your TV these days, Bally might not be on the menu. If you’ve cut the cable cord and stream through YouTube TV or Hulu, you’re out of luck; Bally isn’t a part of either.
Consider my situation here, one that might not be all that different from the average basketball fan in these parts (aside from the fact that I root for an actual contender):
- My Hulu subscription doesn’t let me watch the Pacers (and my previous YouTube TV subscription didn’t either), and
- NBA League Pass doesn’t let me watch the Pacers.
If you’re one of the many who doesn’t have Bally Sports Midwest included in your cable or streaming package, you can still get a separate Bally streaming package — but access to the network runs $19.99 a month or $189.99 for the year. For a season pass that gives you access through the end of the NBA regular season in April, it’s $107.99.
That’s on top of what you’re already paying for cable, streaming services, League Pass and whatever else. How many of you are going to pony up $20 a month just for the Pacers — no matter how young and exciting they may be this season — when you can get the other 29 teams combined for less than that?
The NBA is a global league, and its most popular teams have worldwide followings. But for a team like the Pacers — 29th in attendance last season and still not fully recovered from the Malice in the Palace some 19 years later — the international fan base isn’t really there. It needs to build its support locally.
How is it going to do that when its games can’t be seen by most Indy metro residents?
Sure, the hardcore fans are going to pay whatever they need to pay to see the Pacers. But how is the franchise going to add fans when the product is so inaccessible to most of us?
When I went over to Center Grove the other day to preview their boys basketball team, I learned that most of the Trojan players cheer for other NBA teams. The Sacramento Kings? Sure, I get it — they’re fun to watch. The Phoenix Suns? Man, that’s just sad — but hey, different strokes.
Go into any high school locker room or classroom in the county these days and see how many Pacers fans you find. From what I’ve been hearing, you won’t find many.
Part of that is a product of the day and age we live in. With 40,000 channels on TV and packages like League Pass allowing us to see any team at any time, kids aren’t all but forced to become fans of their hometown teams like they were a generation ago. They can watch, and thus adopt, any team from anywhere in the world.
So yeah, fandom isn’t necessarily determined by geography the way it used to be. But there still shouldn’t be this much apathy.
The Pacers have an exciting product to offer. Tyrese Haliburton is a legit star who might be the best player this city has seen since Reggie Miller and Ron Artest. The team has one of the most fast-paced offenses in the league and might actually make the playoffs. It’s good basketball in what claims to be a basketball state (it’s not anymore, but that’s another column).
If the NBA wants the Pacers to put butts in seats — or if it wants any of its smaller-market teams to hang on to any sort of a following — then it needs to make those teams more accessible to its would-be fans. Letting a bankrupt regional sports network hold a team hostage and prevent most of the area from seeing its games? That’s just bad business.
The Pacers won’t win an NBA championship this season, but they’re a surprisingly entertaining and competitive team. They should have more fans … and they might, if people around here were actually able to watch them play.
Ryan O’Leary is the sports editor for the Daily Journal. He can be reached at [email protected].
