Watching the NBA virtually
This was the season that Payman Benz expected to watch his beloved Clippers chase an NBA championship from seats so close to Staples Center’s court that Benz once heard a referee own up to a blown call.
A pandemic changed those plans.
Unable to use his season tickets in section 111, Benz instead turned to his next-best option last month. While the Clippers prepared to play New Orleans more than 2,500 miles away in the NBA’S bubble near Orlando, Fla., Benz walked into his home office in Los Angeles early on a Saturday morning and logged in to a Microsoft videoconference.
For the next two-plus hours Benz could be seen on a 17-foot-tall videoboard ringing a court at the Disney World sports complex. A live video feed from his laptop’s camera had been digitally stitched amid those of 319 other fans. He was skeptical at first that the technology would provide anything but a gimmicky facsimile of the fan experience he was used to. A Hollywood television director, Benz was wary of being seen in the background of the game broadcast looking anything but locked in.
“If you end up on TV, you don’t want to be doing something embarrassing,” he said. “Whenever I took a bite, I slid out of frame, because I didn’t want to be George Costanza with, like, an ice cream sundae all over my face.”
But by game’s end he was digitally high-fiving fans “seated” around him and felt more engaged than he could remember watching from home. Separated by the same virus that removed the NBA from its home arenas in March,
the fans felt oddly together.
“With basketball coming back, it was a little strange because you can’t watch it with anyone; everyone’s at home, watching alone,” said Benz, who has virtually attended three games. “There’s something nice about having a communal
experience.”
This is what NBA fandom looks like during a pandemic: hundreds of fans doing “The Wave,” wiggling their arms and hands to distract opposing free-throw shooters, cheering for baskets and screaming after
mistakes, just like old times. There is no longer any need to fight traffic or stand in line for pricey concessions. The league’s virtual crowds have included pets. Celebrities such as Lil Wayne, Dwyane Wade and Shaquille O’neal, who would normally only be caught courtside, mingle among fans with upperdeck budgets.
“I don’t think we ever could have predicted the reception we’ve gotten for it,” said Sara Zuckert, the NBA’S head of Next Gen Telecast. “But it’s been great.”
Zuckert joined the league six years ago and for the last two has overseen efforts to innovate the television broadcasts through which the overwhelming majority of the NBA’S fans experience the league. Only 1% of its worldwide audience will attend a game in person, she said. Before the league suspended its season in March because of the coronavirus pandemic, however, none
of Zuckert’s time had been spent considering a scenario in which 100% of fans would be watching on screens.
To virtually integrate fans into buildings where they are physically prohibited, the league worked with Microsoft to digitally add 10 sections of “seating” at the games, holding 32 fans apiece, on videoboards that have become the league’s default backdrop. Zuckert said the league held discussions with the National Basketball Players Association to ensure the look wouldn’t be too distracting. Apparently, that has not been an issue.
“You don’t really notice the fans around you on the screens,” Clippers center Ivica Zubac said. “It’s much more quiet.”
The home team disburses its free “tickets” – or, in this case, log-in codes, to Microsoft’s Teams product – however it likes. Clippers season ticket-holders were given the first opportunity to sign up, which is how Benz watched three games. Marcus Rhodes, a dentist in Houston, received a code because
of his work through a local mentoring nonprofit that had a connection to the league.
The NBA reserves a handful of tickets, as well, which it uses for sponsors or other guests. Some players’ young sons and daughters have watched their fathers play virtually. A group of students from Lebron James’ I Promise School attended an Aug. 5 game between the Lakers and Oklahoma City Thunder. If fans log out early, others typically wait on standby, ready to fill their place.
Once logged in, fans see and hear the others in their section, including a teamappointed moderator checking for unruly behavior while watching a feed sent directly from NBA Entertainment’s headquarters in Secaucus, N.J.
“They’re reacting about a second-and-a-half to two seconds behind the action on the court,” said Steve Hellmuth, the NBA’S executive vice president of media and technology.