[jwplayer kBav5MVx]
The restart of the 2019-20 NBA season was a huge success. Yes, there were a couple of hiccups along the way with players breaking rules regarding COVID-19, but the virus never became a problem in the bubble.
The next big hurdle for the league: the 2020-21 season.
Getting fans back in the stands next year has been a priority for the NBA, forcing the league to push back next year’s official start date.
But no matter how far NBA commissioner Adam Silver pushes the start of next season back, it may not be realistic to get fans back in arenas in 2020-21.
In fact, during the Delivering Alpha conference presented by CNBC, Brooklyn Nets governer Joe Tsai said 2020-21 is going to “be a little tricky because we don’t anticipate having a lot of fans or having a full … arena anytime soon.”
“But guess what?” Tsai added. “The following season, 2022-2023, we look for a very nice rebound. And the thing is, live sports [are] a rare commodity. You could tell during the COVID period when there [were] no sports on TV, people were just craving for it. And once you out the games on, people have come back to watch sports enthusiastically. So, I’m very, very positive, very excited about the future of live sports.
“So in the COVID era, with social distancing and people not being able to congregate in a place, that’s really going to prevent the economics. But these are challenges that can be overcome with time because we know…that there’s going to be a vaccine. You can have rapid testing programs before people come into the building. So at some point, that’s going to come back to normal.”