Cleveland, OH – June 7, 2017 – Quicken Loans Arena: Michelle Beadle and Adam Silver during game 3 of the 2017 NBA Finals
(Photo by Scott Evans / ESPN Images)
LOS ANGELES — In 2005, then-Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver declined to sue YouTube for copyright infringement despite recommendations from the NBA’s lawyers because he had the big picture in mind.
“There was a conga line of companies that were suing YouTube, and (the NBA) had a meeting with lawyers, and Adam Silver presided over the meeting,” NBA SVP of Global Digital Strategy Melissa Brenner recounted at Variety’s Sports and Entertainment Summit. “The lawyers were pretty aggressive in wanting to sue YouTube, and (asked Silver), ‘Should we join?’”
Silver responded, according to Brenner: “Look, this is where the world is going. At a certain point, if we’re not there, does it mean we don’t exist to this new fan that’s growing up on YouTube?”
YouTube launched in 2005 and wasn’t nearly the institution that it is now, and was overwhelmingly dominated by cute cats and poorly produced parody rap videos, but those factors were not the ultimate arbiter in Silver’s decision to override the lawyers’ counsel.
“His rationale was that we needed to be there, we needed to be a part of the conversation, and it’s the whole snack vs. meal philosophy: how do we give people bits of content that gives them access, entertains them, keeps them interested in your sport to bring in new fans and increasingly keeps you relevant?” Brenner said.
The NBA is notably lax in enforcing its video rights online, especially relative to the NFL and MLB — leagues that restrict almost all of their content. Some have argued that this has helped increase the NBA’s brand, particularly among the coveted 18-29 demographic, which uses primarily digital media to consume sports highlights. Silver would likely agree with that argument.
“The way we look at it: we’re incredibly protective of our live game rights, but for the most part, highlights are marketing,” Silver said at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in 2015. “You see both sides of it because leagues brag about how many visits or hits they get, or number of mentions on SportsCenter, but at the same time, they’re also saying, ‘Pay us for it.’”
Earlier in that Sloan Conference, Silver expressed his fascination with the fact that, while YouTube was largely vilified for allowing its users to redistribute sports highlights illegally, entities like SportsCenter were allowed to do so for years without ramifications.
“There’s this service out there, it takes all the (NBA’s) highlights, it doesn’t pay a rights fee for them, and makes a fortune on them — it’s ESPN, it’s called SportsCenter,” Silver said. “And this was long before we had a games deal with ESPN. There was a whole different reaction when YouTube and other sites started doing it. There was a whole different approach from an intellectual property’s perspective, which was interesting and fascinating from the lawyer side of me and from the league’s standpoint.”
