The NBA season officially tips off in two weeks from tonight on October 29th with a match up of the Orlando Magic at the Indiana Pacers. Along with that, so does the fantasy basketball season.
Basketball in the United States is generally seen as the third most popular sport behind football and baseball. However, according to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, for fantasy sports it ranks 4th. Fantasy football is first with a participation rate from fantasy players at 77%. Fantasy baseball is 2nd with at distant 33%, fantasy racing in NASCAR is 3rd at 21% and fantasy basketball is 4th with a 20% participation.
FtSb says: Fantasy sports can lead to increased viewership of the sport and thus in turn make the sport more popular. The NFL has been smart to leverage fantasy sports. In addition, they see the potential to expand the market and target women for fantasy sports. The NFL has also created its its own web properties that host fantasy games on NFL.com. The NFL has executed well on this playbook to embrace fantasy sports.
What the NFL didn't do that the NBA did was to take to court, a case in which the NBA asserted that they owned the statistics that were produced in the game. This was in 1996 in National Basketball Association v. Motorola, case that also involved Stats, Inc when the NBA asserted that the release of real time statistics was a copyright of the NBA's broadcast material. It is interesting to note that in the late 90's and early 2000's is when the NFL fantasy growth and trajectory started to take rise.
Statistics are the lifeblood of any fantasy ecosystem. Any cause to hinder its access makes it that much harder for partners to adopt the platform. Since then the NBA has been playing catch up in fantasy game. Although NBA.com does feature fantasy on their website, they are still dependent on Yahoo! to be the game provider.
There are other deficiencies that can be pointed at in fantasy basketball. One such is the cadence of the NBA schedule. There are games every night and is difficult for owners to manage the game. In addition, basketball has an up hill task of starting its season right in the middle of football.
In any case, it is good to have the NBA season return and we will see you out on the fantasy basketball court.
