SBJ Unpacks: The NBA’s second-half storylines

Tonight in Unpacks: Tanking and the draft lottery. Regional sports network turmoil. Potential expansion on the horizon. These are just a few of the agenda items the NBA faces as it prepares for the second half of the season, reports SBJ’s Tom Friend.

Also tonight:

• Braves see new network as ‘defining moment’
• NHL eyes fourth straight season of record attendance
• What AI, concerts and private capital have in common at PACNet
• Op-ed: The biggest influences shaping sports experiences

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Joe Lemire discusses the latest in WNBA labor negotiations and a looming March 10 deadline to preserve the full season, NBC seeing a significant jump in Winter Olympics viewership, Portland’s WNBA and NWSL teams working on a groundbreaking media initiative and more.

The playoff push has been replaced by the lottery push. Local broadcasts in 13 markets could go poof. NBA Europe and EuroLeague could have a kumbaya moment. Seattle and Las Vegas may be asked to start their engines. Kawhi Leonard could be asked to leave. And LeBron could just leave, period.

The NBA this season has been a mix of feel-good and feel-bad stories, and the second half could lean one way or the other. Board of governors sessions, for instance, are generally not appointment viewing, but circle the March owners meeting on the calendar — if for no other reason than you might hear of teams coming to Seattle and London.

Other swirling issues are more potential gambling accusations and a tenuous arena future in Portland. Otherwise, here are six topics that could envelop the NBA this spring:

1) Tanking

It’s not going away, as long as there are heartthrob ballplayers in college and teams 25 games under .500. That is, if there’s a draft.

At the All-Star Game, The Athletic reported that terminating the draft and turning it into a free agent free-for-all was under league consideration. But Sports Business Journal asked four team executives if they believed that would happen, and their answers were: “No,” “No, I don’t buy that,” “Doubt it” and “NO.”

The point is, no one wants the rich to potentially get richer and the poor potentially poorer — unless the league gets creative with it.

Leave it to former Mavericks majority owner Mark Cuban to chime in with a brainstorm. Cuban tweeted out last week what he once proposed in a league meeting (note: post is edited for clarity):

“Here is what I floated: Make the draft more like free agency. Except the worst record gets the salary slotted to the first draft pick. The next worst record gets the next amount. Etc. Then the teams recruit players with their “rookie cap room.” The team with the worst record has the most money. But if their organization is terrible, the best players don’t like the coach, whatever, they can take less money and go to a different team. The second round stays the same. Got shot down. Quickly.”

Odds are any similar proposal will get shot down again. But the lottery template will almost certainly be revamped in time for next season, with team executives now complaining that tanking is affecting ticket values and game experience. After a recent Competition Committee meeting, Commissioner Adam Silver reportedly floated several antidotes to tanking, and they ranged from freezing the draft standings at the trade deadline to first-round picks only being top-4 protected or top-14 protected and above (avoiding the furor this year where teams like the Jazz and Wizards have top-8 protected picks and are accused of overtly tanking).

Other solutions are never allowing a team to slide into consecutive top-4 lottery picks and/or finish bottom-3 in successive seasons; not allowing teams to pick in the top 4 after reaching conference finals (as the Pacers probably will this year); basing a team’s lottery odds on their record over the past two seasons (the pitiful teams will love that); allowing even play-in teams into the lottery (that’s a playoff and lottery push all in one); or give every lottery team the same odds for the No. 1 pick.

Reaction among team execs was varied. One, for instance, believed freezing the lottery odds on New Years Day would improve the back half of the season --though teams might still circumvent it by resting stars through Christmas and then turning on the jets to make the playoffs. Another thought a freeze at the All-Star break made better sense.

Still another team exec liked some combination of letting play-in teams into the lottery and flattening the odds for all the lottery teams.

To each his own, but upcoming Board of Governors meetings may turn into all-out congressional debates.

2) Local TV

Main Street Sports Group has persevered, rising from Chapter 11 (bankruptcy) and now staving off Chapter 7 (liquidation). But the 13 NBA teams it owns rights to (Hawks, Hornets, Cavaliers, Pistons, Pacers, Clippers, Grizzlies, Heat, Bucks, Timberwolves, Thunder, Magic and Spurs) are ready if Main Street’s creditors force the FanDuel Sports Networks to go dark. Through the NBA, the teams would then emergently stream games on League Pass and find local over-the-air channels. If it seems precarious, it isn’t. Since Main Street has been on the brink for three years, the plans are in place.

3) NBA Europe

Team governors could be asked to green light the new venture at March’s BOG session, depending on whether prospective owners in markets such as London are willing to pay the $500 million to $1 billion franchise fees the league is seeking. On the plus side, Silver can inform owners that new EuroLeague CEO Chus Bueno, a former NBA employee, can perhaps bridge a gap among the NBA, FIBA and EuroLeague clubs. That could help lure brands such as Real Madrid and FC Barcelona — and instant credibility in Europe.

4) Domestic expansion

Silver has said he’s done teasing Seattle and Las Vegas, but, at his All-Star news conference, he teased them. He said owners will discuss expansion at the March meeting, and, while they won’t stage a vote, they might begin asking prospective owners to fire up the bidding. If the franchise fees aren’t around the $5 billion range (or higher?), the owners may decide it’s not worth splitting national TV money two more ways. Until there’s clarity, it’s still all a tease.

5) The Aspiration investigation

Steve Ballmer hosted his Intuit Dome All-Star Game, and Kawhi Leonard had the heat check of all heat checks there, scoring 31 points in one 12-minute barrage. But the elephant in the room (or arena) was Leonard’s alleged no-show job at the now-defunct eco-friendly company Aspiration, and Ballmer’s potential role in a salary cap circumvention. If law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz uncovers enough evidence, the potential penalty — if Silver gets rough — could be voiding Leonard’s contract. Would he do it in-season?

6) LeBron James’ Lakers exit

The oldest player in the NBA will be a free agent at season’s end at 41, and the dreamers have him back with the Cavaliers or going to the Warriors. If nothing else, the All-Star Game showed Anthony Edwards or Victor Wembanyama could capably replace James as the face of the league, although Edwards was blunt when asked if he’s ready.

“Nah,” he said. “They got Wembanyama. They’ll be aight.”

Braves President & CEO Derek Schiller said launching in-house television network “BravesVision” will be a “defining moment” for the franchise and its fanbase, providing increased reach and economic protection.

Speaking on a Q4 and year-end earnings call Wednesday, Schiller said the next step is focusing on execution, “optimizing outcomes across subscriber reach, distribution, advertising and streaming options while continue to ensure fan access.”

The Braves accumulated $188.6M in national and local broadcast revenue in 2025, up 14% from $166.1M in 2024. However, the team’s operating income loss in Q4 rose to $49.8M in 2025, up 167% from $18.7M in 2024, “due to the contract asset impairment associated with the termination of a long-term local broadcasting agreement.” Overall, though, operating loss improved 66% from $39.7M in 2024 to $13.5M in 2025.

Jill Robinson, EVP/CFO of the team’s holdings company, said: “You may see a difference in how cash flow comes in with us running the business now as opposed to outsourcing the media business to FanDuel. You’ll begin to see a little more of how that plays out when the business really begins to operate in Q2.”

The Braves elected to pivot in-house following the financial collapse of Main Street Sports Group. Braves Chairman Terry McGuirk was a longtime TV executive with TBS.

“We have one of the largest television territories in baseball spanning (six) states, which affords us the ability to optimize our financial outcome, a factor that provides us an advantage that no other Main Street team has,” McGuirk said.

Despite missing the postseason in 2025, the Braves saw an 11% increase in total revenue (baseball and mixed-use) to $732.5M from $662.7M. Baseball revenue was up 7% ($635.1M from $595.4M), with mixed-use development revenue up 45% ($97.4M from $67.3M). Baseball revenue is a combination of ticket sales, concessions, advertising sponsorships, suites, premium seat fees and national and local broadcast rights. Mixed-use development revenue primarily comes from rental income via The Battery Atlanta.

Schiller said the Braves have sold more than 1.9 million tickets for the 2026 season.

According to Cot’s Baseball Contracts, Atlanta’s competitive balance tax 40-man roster payroll was $234.8M in 2025 (10th) from $276.1M in 2024 (fourth). They are projected to be at $259.5M in 2026.

Aside from a new era on the local media front, the Braves are also facing uncertainty via a potential tax hike on the salaries of their five highest-paid players starting in 2027. U.S. Rep. Brian Jack (R-Ga.) told SBJ this offseason that he is interested in leading legislation that would allow the publicly traded team to avoid it.

A tax provision prohibiting public companies from deducting the salaries of their five highest-paid employees will go into effect that year. The Braves are the only American-based publicly traded MLB team, and its five highest-paid players are slated to make $96M in 2027, which would mean a tax increase of $19M with a 21% corporate tax rate,

“We’ve looked into it and we understand what’s out there and we’re working on that,” Schiller said. “I don’t think it’s appropriate at this point in time to comment on that because we’re still in the midst of those discussions in what we’re trying to do with that.”

With the NHL basking in the aura of an Olympic gold medal, the league heads into the final seven weeks of the regular season on pace to set a total attendance record for the fourth consecutive regular season, according to SBJ’s analysis of official gameday box scores.

With 70% of the games played, the league averaged 17,612 fans per game, up 0.4% over the full 2024-25 season and 1.0% over 2023-24.

The league last season drew 23.01 million fans.

The Mammoth have seen the biggest year-over-year increase so far (up 10.8%), as the addition of roughly 1,100 seats to the Delta Center and a playoff spot likely in their future have kept the interest in hockey high in Salt Lake City.

The Wild and Blue Jackets are the only clubs with a decrease of more than 3 percentage points. That could change, however, as the Blue Jackets entered the break with a seven-game win streak and the Wild are in second place in the Western Conference thanks to an active five-game win streak.

Paciolan’s annual PACNet event has been an enlightening look into the ticketing company’s broad dealings in the college space.

What have people been talking about most this week? These are just a few of the big ticket (Sorry, it was sitting right there) items:

Data and AI continue to be important

Learfield has long touted its capability to gather data and use that to make better decisions in who it targets in marketing material, ticket sales, etc.

That hasn’t changed.

The company continues to lean on heavily on data, along with sorting through how to best use AI in its processes, particularly at Paciolan.

“It has really been a focus of conversation since I started at [Paciolan],” President Brendan Lynch told SBJ. “We say that ‘Our innovation is AI-enabled.’ What that means is two different things for us: On one hand we’re enabling our product development process with AI. ... We’re also putting those tools in the hands of our clients.”

The generative AI boom continues to be a heavy conversation within college sports as schools look for leaner, more nimble staffs, while improving operational efficiency. Paciolan is one of a handful of companies leaning into it.

Private equity has people intrigued

Utah made waves in December when a nine-figure deal with Otro Capital became public.

The school has continued to work through the finer details, but essentially, it’s in the process of shifting revenue generating arms of its athletic department into a new company. Boosters will effectively be able to buy stock in the new company.

“These were people. They weren’t these big bad vampires,” Utah AD Mark Harlan said during a Monday panel. “They were smart people. They had some things to say. And with [Utah President Taylor Randall], who’s the former business dean, we started thinking, ‘OK, well maybe this is interesting for Utah.’ And that began a journey for us.”

The deal is a seminal moment in college sports and marked the first school-centric foray into private capital, and it may be a blueprint for others to follow.

Concerts have everyone talking

Seemingly every conversation I had with over the last 48 hours has included concerts.

Why? In short, schools need cash.

The concert boom in college sports is real. Utah has Zach Bryan coming to Rice-Eccles Stadium this summer. Auburn developed a partnership with Peachtree Entertainment to effectively bring shows to the school. Texas constructed one venue — the Moody Center — with the idea of getting more shows to Austin and a second that is in the early stages of development.

That also comes after a string of other shows cropped up in the last 12-24 months. Virginia Tech hosted Metallica in a nice ode to its “Enter Sandman” football entrance. Texas A&M held the largest ticketed concert in history when George Strait played at Kyle Field.

The entertainment world has become an avenue several schools are increasingly exploring as they look to better monetize venues that often see use for just a handful of fall Saturdays. Don’t be surprised if more shows are announced in the months to come.

Let’s be honest, the biggest moments in sport have never been just about the score. It’s about the atmosphere, the legacy and the narratives that unfold live in front of millions.

Now more than ever, with feeds saturated by automated content and AI slop, the line between authentic and artificial feels paper-thin, and people are increasingly seeking experiences that feel tangible. For brands, live sport offers a rare combination of physical infrastructure and an existing, emotionally invested community, enabling interaction at scale rather than passive exposure.

According to Freeman’s Trust Report, 77% of consumers say their trust in a brand increases after engaging with it at a live, in-person event, and 66% report they are more likely to purchase following the experience. In an environment defined by fragmented attention, the brands that win are the ones that design for participation, not just visibility. When strategy, creative, placement and production are aligned from the start, the result isn’t just a stunt. It’s a story that lives on the ground and travels organically across social surfaces.

We’re beginning to see meaningful acceleration in how technology shapes live sporting environments, particularly with real-time content that reacts to moments on the field and experiences that can adapt based on crowd behavior and sentiment.

Many of the technical foundations are already in place. Broadcast data feeds carry granular metadata and fan interaction is trackable across second-screen engagement. The difference is that the technology is finally able to process these inputs in real time and influence an experience while it is unfolding.

Based on investment patterns and infrastructure upgrades, there is a reasonable assumption that this year’s event cycle could shift from static experiences to more adaptive environments. This could include reactive content with responsive variations and even predictive triggers tied to fan sentiment.

What this means for marketers

Experiences will need to be designed early, rather than added late in the process. The experience will need to be designed alongside the event itself, with clear intent around how fans will participate and be “engaged’” in the process.

The way success is measured will also need to evolve. Impressions and reach will matter less than signals of real engagement like participation rates, content creation, repeat interaction and how the experiences translate into social post-event.

Experiential marketers must plan for flexibility. Instead of creating fully scripted activations, experiences will need to respond to what’s happening on the field, in the crowd and across digital platforms in real time.

Finally, live sports should be treated as living systems, not fixed moments. The opportunity here is not just to show up, but to listen, adapt and co-create alongside fans as the experience unfolds.

As model accuracy improves and the demand for in-person events continues to grow, there is an exciting opportunity for brand experiences to become more impactful than ever, not because they’re louder or more high-tech, but because they’re continually shaped by the conditions of the moment.

Alex Buxton is director of global partnerships at Thinkingbox, an agency creating innovative content, digital, experiential, social and creative services.

• The Miami Open signed Pirelli to a three-year sponsorship that will designate the Italian tire manufacturer a platinum sponsor of the tournament, reports SBJ’s Rob Schaefer.
• AMB Sports and Entertainment signed Aflac to a seven-year deal as the front-of-kit sponsor for its forthcoming NWSL expansion franchise, which is set to debut in 2028, writes SBJ’s Alex Silverman.
• Craftsman’s title sponsorship of NASCAR’s Truck Series expires after this year and a renewal hasn’t been reached, meaning the sanctioning body may be back in the market for a potential replacement as soon as 2027, sources tell SBJ’s Adam Stern.
• Stern also reports that TKO Group Holdings feels that it punched above its weight in 2025, releasing earnings on Wednesday that beat internal and external expectations in a couple key categories through increased site fees and sponsorships.
• The American Cornhole League and ESPN renewed their media-rights agreement for another three years through 2028, notes SBJ’s Austin Karp.
• Anthony Kim became an investor and partner in Malbon Golf just weeks after he shocked the golf world by beating Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau to win LIV Golf Adelaide, writes SBJ’s Josh Carpenter.
• MLS reached an agreement with digital media platform OneFootball to stream all live matches from its development league, MLS Next Pro, for free during the 2026 season, notes Silverman.