The NBA is expanding its innovative micro-transactions initiative by allowing fans to watch portions of games in 10-minute increments.
Starting tomorrow (Saturday), fans can purchase 10 minutes of real-time access to the League Pass service – which contains live out-of-market NBA matches – for $0.99 via NBA.com and the NBA App.
Instead of gaining access to just one game, fans can now watch as many live games as they choose during the 10-minute window.
“It’s another extension of micro-transactions. The 10-Minute Pass is focused on the dimension of time,” Chris Benyarko, NBA senior vice-president, direct to consumer, told SportBusiness. “If someone has 10 minutes or 20 minutes or a set amount of time to watch NBA action, they can buy the 10-Minute Pass and they can navigate across multiple games…they can watch other games that are on archive.
“It’s essentially 10 minutes of what a League Pass subscription would be. And then after that 10 minutes is up, they can buy another 10 minutes, buy a game, or buy a full traditional subscription.”
The NBA started the micro-transactions initiative with the 2018-19 season by allowing fans to watch the fourth quarters of games for $1.99. This was expanded to quarter-by-quarter pricing in December 2018.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver told SportBusiness last year: “There is no doubt that people will see on social media that there is an exciting finish to a game so might be more inclined to watch the last five minutes.
“But I also think there is going to be an audience for people early in the evening who know that for whatever reason they only have time during the first or second quarter to watch a game but don’t think it’s a good consumer proposition to buy a whole game. So I’m looking forward to experiment in the first half of the game as well.”