The NBA’s experimental play-in tournament is coming back in the 2021-2022 NBA season according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, and it’s with good reason.
The play-in originated in the NBA Bubble where the Memphis Grizzlies and Portland Trail Blazers played a two-game series to determine the 8th seed (the higher seed has to win one game, the lower seed has to win two).
The consensus was that it was fun, new, and added a new wrinkle; allowing a ninth seed that could be a hair out of the eighth seed playoffs a chance to prove they were the better team. However, it was only one game, in one conference.
In the 2020-2021 season, the NBA brought the play-in back after its successful trial with two aspects being added: the play-in would consist of the 10th, 9th, 8th and 7th seeds in both conferences.
The NBA’s play-in tournament is here to stay
There are three key reasons why the play-in was successful, and why the NBA wants to keep the tournament going: high TV ratings, increasing fan interest, and reducing the amount teams tanking in the last month of the season.
The NBA play-in tournament could increase TV ratings
It’s no secret the NBA prioritizes money and lost expected revenues during the 2020 season. From Daryl Morey’s Hong Kong tweet to NBA’s bubble schedule competing for attention against the NFL and everything else between.
The first play-in ever between the Grizzlies and Blazers peaked at 2.6 million viewers, which was one million more average viewers than the average NBA regular-season game in the 19-20 season. That set a precedent for play-in games going forward and it carried over into the 20-21 season. The 2020-2021 regular season average for viewers was 1.3 million, all of the play-in games, both East and West went over that average.
.@NBA play-in game viewership averages:
— Eben Novy-Williams (@novy_williams) May 20, 2021
Lakers-Warriors (late game, ESPN): 5.6 million
Wizards-Celtics (late game, TNT): 2.5 million
Spurs-Grizzlies (early game, ESPN): 2.3 million
Hornets-Pacers (early game, TNT): 1.4 million
In particular, the Warriors versus Lakers reached 5.6 million viewers, which is well over half of what the 2021 NBA Finals are currently seeing throughout the first three games.
It’s undeniable that the NBA’s play-in games are revenue machines. To get half an NBA Finals viewership-wise with safely assumingly less than half the marketing costs behind it, makes it an easy decision on the NBA’s behalf to keep the play-in tournament for 2021-2022 season alone.
The NBA play-in will increase fan interest
Fan interest is closely tied with viewership, obviously.
And where the fans fit in this is that the NBA has a long season, by American sports standards and global sports standards.
82 regular-season games is a lot of content to consume, add the preseason, Summer League, and NBA playoffs as well and you have a lot of basketball — possibly too much for the casual fan. The play-in gives casual fans an easy way into the end of the season, typically the start of the season, the Christmas day games, the All-Star weekend, and the Playoffs are the key areas where casual fans regain interest.
The play-in allows for another “drop-in point” for the season. Where casual fans can get a small sample of the last ten regular-season games in the lead-up to the tournament and then watch through to the Playoffs.
More viewers mean more TV ratings, mean more merchandise sales, and mean more expensive advertisements slots.
Side note: The NBA has shown it’s open to selling off name branding rights for its products: the Mountain Dew 3-point contest, the AT&T Slam Dunk Contest and the G-League. It’s not hard to imagine the NBA play-in, brought to you by *insert multi-billion dollar cooperation here*.
If (and it will) the play-in tournament continues the NBA is looking at a gold mine, basically a new and relatively simple way (schedule and marketing-wise) of generating NBA Finals like revenue.
The NBA play-in tournament will (maybe) preventing tanking
One major aspect of fans’ interest dwindling throughout a season is teams tanking, the end of the season has always been plagued with teams resting players to influence their season record into having a better draft pick.
Typically, the end of the season would see the teams roughly 5-10 games out of the playoffs prematurely end their season. Leaving blowouts and frankly unwatchable games towards the latter months of the regular season.
There’s no definitive data or science behind this, as the play-in is a one-and-a-half-season sample but the result have shown promise in the NBA’s eyes thus far. Evan Wasch, the NBA’s executive vice president of basketball strategy and analytics told Sports Illustrated’s Howard Beck that the league has been “pleased,” with the small sample of increased competitiveness after the lottery odd changes and play-ins introduction.
Less tanking means that teams put better a TV product out on the floor. They are doing this now because the play-in has added another pathway to make the playoffs, even if you had a rough start to the season.
In previous years the Spurs, Warriors, Kings, and Pelicans might have packed it in, rested their stars, and begged the basketball gods for a good lottery pick. This season, all of the teams mentioned either made the play-in or were two games away from it.
Does the play-in fix resting? No, does it fix the OKC Thunder or the Houston Rockets possibly having G-League-level rosters for half the season? No, but the play-in gives the middle-of-the-pack teams a chance to elevate from 9th-12th in the standings into the playoffs; and that has given us more enjoyable basketball.