The Digital NBA

How the World's Savviest League Brings the Court to Our Couch

Author: Steven Secular

Breaking down the global success of a sports entertainment colossus

Cloth – $110

978-0-252-04520-2

Paper – $27.95

978-0-252-08734-9

eBook – $14.95

978-0-252-05458-7

Publication Date

Paperback: 06/20/2023
Cloth: 06/20/2023

Series: Studies in Sports Media

Buy the Book Request Desk/Examination Copy Request Review Copy Request Rights or Permissions Request Alternate Format Preview

About the Book

The National Basketball Association reaches a global audience via a multiplatform strategy that leverages its uncanny ability to connect fans to all things NBA. Steven Secular brings readers inside the league’s global operations and traces the history of the NBA’s approach to sports media from its 1980s embrace of cable through the streaming revolution of the twenty-first century. As fans around the world stream games and other league content, NBA teams incorporate foreign languages and cultures into broadcasts to boost their product’s appeal to audiences in Brazil, China, and beyond. Secular’s analysis reveals how the NBA continues to transform itself into a wildly successful media producer and distributor more akin to a streaming studio than the sports leagues of old even as its media partners and sponsors erase any notion of sports as a civic good.

A timely look at a dynamic media landscape, The Digital NBA shows how the games we love became content first and sport a distant second.

About the Author

Steven Secular is an independent scholar.

Reviews

"This book shows how the the National Basketball Association (NBA), along with other sports leagues, has 'come to function more as global media conglomerates in practice, as the media interests of sport have increasingly driven leagues' profitability.'" --Choice

Blurbs

“The book offers a timely and original contribution to an understanding of the current, highly managed transformation of the globally differentiated access to media content. Secular convincingly argues that in many respects the NBA is a frontrunner regarding its global media strategies and thus--similar to Netflix for fictional content--can be taken as a lens into the wider marketization and mediatization of sport in a global multi-platform environment.”--Markus Stauff, University of Amsterdam