The Golden State Warriors avenged themselves against the Cleveland Cavaliers and LeBron James on Monday night, winning the NBA Finals in five games.
The 2016-17 NBA season was filled with technology news that changed the sport in a variety of ways and enhanced the player and fan experiences. In October, SportTechie predicted that virtual reality and data collection on players would be among the biggest headlines this season — and both lived up to the hype, particularly with NextVR live streaming games in virtual reality for its first full season.
From an inaugural NBA esports league to a rule banning teams from using wearable data against their players in contract negotiations, SportTechie is recapping the biggest tech stories of the season.
Wearables
In January, the National Basketball Players Association and NBA struck a collective bargaining agreement that will limit how teams can access and use data collected about a player from wearable devices.
Teams can continue to request players voluntarily wear adidas miCoach elite systems, Catapult Sports ClearSky and Optimeye systems, Intel Curie systems, STAT Sports Viper systems, VERT Wearable Jump Monitors, Zebra wearable tags and Zephyr Bioharness systems.
However, there are limits as to how teams can use the data collected from these devices.
While it was determined that data could be used for player health and performance purposes for on-court tactical and strategic purposes, teams are barred from using the data during contract negotiations and from making data public or using it for commercial purposes.
Wearables aren’t allowed during games. The seven-year agreement takes effect on July 1.
NBA 2K Esports League
In May, 17 NBA teams signed on to participate in the NBA 2K esports league’s inaugural season, which is slated to begin in 2018.
Among the participating teams are the Cavaliers and the Warriors. Other teams include the Boston Celtics, Dallas Mavericks, Miami Heat, Sacramento Kings and New York Knicks. The Philadelphia 76ers, also participating in the league, were the first U.S. professional sports teams to purchase esports franchises last fall. Others have since followed.
The NBA and Take-Two Interactive Software announced the league in February, marking the first time a U.S. pro sports league has operated an official esports league.
NextVR Audiences ‘Surge’
For the 2017 season, NBA Digital partnered with NextVR to air one weekly regular season NBA LEAGUE PASS game in virtual reality. The partnership was targeted at people who might not have the opportunity to attend games in person or who wanted to be able to experience the game in new ways by sitting in virtual courtside seats and switching their viewpoint on demand.
NextVR Vice President of Content Danny Keens told NBC recently that audience levels surged throughout the season. The company ended the season by creating a highlight reel of all five games of the NBA championship series, giving users, for example, an up-close view of LeBron James’ alley-oop to himself in game 4.
Next VR is offering the highlight reel for free for Gear VR users through the Oculus store. However, a spokesperson said the company may work to get the technology onto additional platforms and hardware for next season.
Twitter Live Shows
Ahead of the season, the NBA and Turner Sports announced the creation of two 30-minute live weekly shows that would air exclusively on Twitter during the season.
As the season officially kicked off at the end of October, they officially launched “The Starters Twitter Show” and “The Warmup.”
The deal, which marked an expansion to an existing content partnership between Twitter and the NBA, also prompted the NBA to increase its content production across Vine and Periscope.
Hey, this is neat. #TheStarters live on @twitter weekly: pic.twitter.com/YiJ0WDiq6i
— Tas Melas (@TasMelas) October 25, 2016
Twitter live shows gained steam among third-party broadcasters as well. Twitter approached Nate Duncan and Danny Leroux early on in the season to work together to produce their #twitterNBAshow second-screen experience.
Facebook Live
In January, the NBA announced that it would stream a regular season game on Facebook Live for the first time.
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The Jan. 8 game between the Warriors and the Sacramento Kings aired on a Sunday via geofencing to fans only in India, where more than a million of the 33 million “likes” of the NBA Facebook page come from.
The stream was an effort to test out the new NBA Mobile View feed on Facebook live, which was available for subscribers of NBA LEAGUE PASS this season for fans who chose to receive a zoomed-in view of basketball games from mobile devices.
Then on Jan. 12, the Denver Nuggets-Indiana Pacers contest for the NBA Global Games London saw BT Sport simulcast it to fans across the U.K. on BT Sport’s Facebook page and shared on the NBA’s Facebook page in the U.K.
Previously, only an NBA preseason game was streamed on Facebook Live. The game, between the Orlando Magic and San Antonio Spurs, was streamed to Facebook users located within a 75-mile radius of the Amway Center in Orlando.
The Kings also became the first NBA team to broadcast using Facebook’s Live 360 video feature. The video, which received 74,000 views after it went live, shows Kings dancers practicing. The team partnered with 360fly to broadcast.
“House Of Legends”
Beginning this season, the NBA and Google began hosting a show on the NBA VR app on Daydream called “House of Legends,” which starred seven-time NBA All-Star champion Robert Horry and other retired players, highlighting top playoff performances and discussing the biggest moments from their own careers.
The series was inspired by both the HBO series “Hard Knocks” and from a 12-minute virtual reality film featuring LeBron James.
New Ways To Train Officials
In March, the NBA announced that it would begin using technology, including virtual reality and other data-driven analytics, to recruit and train referees.
As part of that, the NBA plans to use a data-driven game review system to create objective measurement standards for officials and to track their accuracy and errors per game.
NBA Gatorade League
The NBA Gatorade League (previously the NBA Development League) announced plans to begin using data to enhance player sports performance and recovery in a collaboration between the Gatorade Sports Science Institute and the NBA G-League, the official minor league of the NBA.
Under the terms of the deal, sports scientists at the Gatorade Sports Science Institute will next season begin to partner with the league on things such as player nutrition and training programs, enhancing their performance through to use of cutting-edge technologies.
The two also plan to coproduce behind-the-scenes video content.
NBA InPlay Game
The NBA launched a mobile fantasy game called NBA InPlay at the start of the season that allows fans to compete for cash prizes during nationally-televised games.
The game, born from a partnership between NBA Digital and FanDuel, is a second-screen experience designed to keep fans watching live games longer while boosting engagement.
NBA TV & NBA Team Pass
More companies adopted the NBA TV app this season, giving fans more opportunity to watch out-of-market games. In November, both PlayStation Vue and Sling TV launched the app on their respective platforms, competing for cord-cutter eyeballs.
Separately, Dish became the first pay-TV provider to offer NBA TEAM PASS, which offers fans access to live out-of-market games from one team. Last season, the package was only available to broadband and mobile subscribers on iOS and Android devices.