“Played in Orlando for Free”: Brooklyn Nets Guard Raises Serious Concerns on the Credibility of NBA Revenue Share

The NBA deserves a pat on its back for being one of the first leagues to take the pandemic seriously and put operations to halt. Also, it organized a very successful restart and managed to complete the season amidst many troubles. However, something about the season has left bitterness in a Brooklyn Nets guard’s mind.

The administration pulled a fantastic job with managing the event but failed at touching the projected revenues. The NBA TV ratings suffered big time in the 2019-20 season. Even the NBA Finals could not match the numbers from the last year. So what went wrong, and why was it even worse for the players?

Brooklyn Nets’ guard raises important doubts

In a recent series of tweets, star player Spencer Dinwiddie made some calculations that raised many eyebrows against the NBA. He simply retweeted the Reuters report that suggested that the NBA incurred a loss of $1.5 Billion against the projections. 

Then Spencer quickly made some simple calculations to explain why the figures signal something fishy. The NBA players are liable to receive a 50% share of the annual league revenue. If the projections for the 2019-20 seasons were $8 billion, the players must’ve received $4 Billion. Instead, an escrow (money held by a third party) of 10% and a further 25% deduction because of COVID led to the players losing $1.4 Billion.

Now, this number is almost the same as to what the league lost this year. Hence, the 27-year-old claimed, “So basically in spite of the mandate to bear the Covid weight 50/50 and the Daryl Morey fiasco (300-500M) the players covered this entire loss and played in Orlando for free…”

What led to this loss in revenue for the NBA league?

Many things added in putting such a heavy loss on the otherwise successful sports business. The pandemic led to the loss of 171 regular-season games. It further stopped all the revenue generation from ticketing. Moreover, it took almost $200 million for the league to set up the Orlando Bubble and continue the operations there. Adding salt to the injury, Rockets’ former GM Daryl Morey’s controversial tweet led to China boycotting the broadcast of the games.

As if all of this was not enough, the chances are that the next season will not allow more than 72 games for one team in the regular season. All of this has aggravated the pain of the league that is already suffering from a decrease in TV viewership.

Do the concerns raised by Spencer Dinwiddie make sense to you?