Last week, NBA commissioner Adam Silver faced a wave of criticism about comments he made about the NBA being a “highlights-based sport.”
The criticism was largely warranted. The NBA is just weeks away from beginning the first year of an 11-year, $76 billion set of media rights deals in which broadcasters are paying to air full games, not just highlights. Silver’s comments were sloppy, even if they weren’t intended to devalue his full-game product.
On Tuesday, the commissioner attempted to clarify his remarks made during the Front Office Sports “Tuned In” conference.
Last week, Adam Silver called basketball a “highlights-based sport.”
The NBA commissioner wants to clarify what he meant.
Presented by @oneelevate_ pic.twitter.com/IL9RfvQbaB
— Front Office Sports (@FOS) September 16, 2025
“A portion of the question, the end of the question was about the impact of social media,” Silver began, adding context to the question that spurred his viral clip. “That’s what I was answering on our sport. And what I was saying in a very positive way … I think it’s additive to those who watch our games live and increase the likelihood that they’ll watch our games live. By saying highlights-based, I meant when I watch the traditional SportsCenter and they have the Top-10 Plays, and five of those are NBA plays, I’m like, ‘Yeah!’ I’m not thinking like, ‘Oh, damn, more highlights are being promoted from our league.’
“Conventionally, the reaction to that was like, ‘That’s really good.’ It’s a live game full of highlights. I mean, by definition, highlights aren’t necessarily past tense. NBA games are packed with action. I guess it was misconstrued, but the point I was trying to make is that there is this community of social media followers, frankly, globally estimated at roughly around two and a half billion people connect with the NBA in some way. Any brand, any programming source would love to have those two and a half billion people.
“Now, I think the challenge for the league office, and this is something I’ve been talking a lot about with my colleagues internally, is how do we then ensure that we’re converting a highlights-based fan, for example, to a live game viewer? By no means, we don’t want it to be a substitute. We’re not going to probably have, especially because of time zone issues when you’re a global sport, it’s going to be highly unlikely that everywhere in the middle of the night, people are going to stop and watch our games. But to me, it’s something, as I said, that now, with these incredibly exciting moments, how do we demonstrate to our fans that they don’t want to miss them live?”
Silver correctly identifies where the value of his league lies: live games. And his clarification paints a much clearer picture of how the NBA is approaching fandom. Highlights are at the top of the funnel and give fans a taste of what the league has to offer, but the ultimate goal is to convert them into full-game viewers.
The commissioner is right, highlights are a great promotional vehicle for the league and allow people to stay engaged even when they cannot set aside two hours to watch an entire game. But the way his initial comments sounded, especially in the context of the rising cost of accessing NBA games, made it seem like he was suggesting fans watch highlights instead of watching games.
Like him or not, Silver is bright enough to know there’s no NBA if there’s no audience for the live telecasts. He just needed to clean up his messaging a bit.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.