By: Kylan W. Watson
On Wednesday, December 14th 2016 the National Basketball Association and the National Basketball Association Players Association, reached a new tentative seven-year agreement that helped the league avoid a lockout in late 2018.
It is great for the league, its players, and fans that a new agreement was reached because the NBA is riding a new wave of popularity and momentum due to streaming, formation of super teams, and new television deals. The NBA is seeing record revenue mostly due to the new television deals reached with ESPN, TNT, and ABC. Also basketball is an international sport and the NBA unlike the other leagues is taking advantage of basketball’s appeal in Europe and China to expand and take advantage of technology by introducing live game streaming no matter where you are through NBA.com.
As a result of the new TV deals the cap in the NBA increased this year and is projected to increase to 102 million dollars next season. This increased revenue would have made a lockout in 2017 disastrous for the NBA because players and owners would lose out on that money. The owners of the NBA and the players have a 50/50 share of revenue from the NBA.
With this new deal everyone wins, players like Stephen Curry who is a free agent this summer could sign a new deal for as much as 200 million dollars. If Curry signs a deal for that much money that would make him the highest paid NBA player in the history of the league, and all of that money is guaranteed. Curry is not the only one, next year Philadelphia 76er’s rookie Ben Simmons’ salary is projected to increase to 25 million dollars. These two are the most high profile players that win this year. However, long term everybody wins with this new CBA that will be ratified on January 13th 2017.
