Speaking to the media following Wednesday's board of governors meeting in New York, commissioner Adam Silver's description of the NBA as "very much a highlights-based sport" is directionally accurate, if wince-inducing to some long-time fans.
NBA highlights are essentially free through YouTube, Reddit, TikTok, Instagram or your social feed of choice.
"There's a huge amount of our content that people can essentially consume for free," he said. "This is very much a highlights-based sport. So Instagram, TikTok, Twitter you name it. ... There's an enormous amount of content out there."
However, if you want to watch actual games? Well, it will cost you. How much?
Given the NBA's new suite of national TV partners this upcoming season, you'll need to pay for a range of subscriptions (and fees, of course) to watch national games, along with your local team.
Spoiler alert: It's $880, which includes a new $160 fee to watch on new subscription-only streaming partners.
Let's break it down, with this caveat: This estimate is for a "typical" fan experience -- watching your local team plus all the nationally televised games.
(One more assumption: These numbers cover eight months of "month-to-month" subscriptions -- mid-October through mid-June -- not annual subs, which can offer volume discounts... but also three-plus months where NBA games aren't on.)
Start with this: Your monthly cable, satellite or multi-channel streaming service (YouTube TV, Fubo, Hulu, etc.) costs typically includes access to watching your local team.
Many teams offer "direct-to-consumer" or "free-over-the-air" options for fans without cable, but we won't cover those here.
Cable/streaming package: $720 ($90/month* x 8 months)
(These packages can range from $80 to more than $100, so we just took a simple average.)
(Again, if you have Amazon Prime already, you get Prime Video as part of your monthly/annual subscription fee to Amazon. Our assumption is that you only want to pay for the NBA on Amazon.)
If you want to skip the typical cable/streaming package and don't mind paying extra for (or missing out on) direct access to your local team, you can get ESPN/ABC games through the ESPN DTC plan ($30/month x 8 months: $240); NBC games through Peacock ($11/month x 8 months: $88); and Amazon.
Total: $880 -- Local and national games
If you are wistful for the "old days" when you could watch all your NBA games for the cost of your monthly cable subscription, the NBA's addition of new partners Peacock and Amazon Prime Video will add $160 to your season-long bill, in order to catch nationally televised games on five out of the seven nights a week during the season.
(For reference, the TV subscription fees required to watch the 2025 NFL season - just your team and national games, not the League Pass-like "Sunday Ticket" - total up to $631.)
Optional: League Pass
League Pass lets you watch regular-season local games out of your home market that aren't being broadcast nationally). For this, I only counted six months of payments from the start of the regular season on Oct. 21 through the end, April 12.
(No, it makes no sense to me why it costs me $110 for a "season" pass but only $102 if you pay month-to-month from the regular season's start to finish.)
Oh, have a dot-edu email? You might qualify for the League Pass student rate: $10/month (which for 6 months of the regular season will run you $60).
Local and national games, with League Pass: $982
Now that you've seen how it all shakes out, what do you think? Off-putting? Reasonable?
The NBA put out a handy guide to how to watch the league's nationally televised games, now on basically every night of the week: