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Billionaire investor Mark Cuban and several current NBA stars have backed a $4m (£3m) fundraising round for Irish sports tech company Orreco. They join major-winning golfers Padraig Harrington and Graeme McDowell as investors in Orreco, which uses AI to analyse athletes’ movement for signs of injury susceptibility. “This is the first proactive approach to use AI to help reduce injury risk,” said Cuban, a co-owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA team who made his billions as a tech founder and appears on US TV show Shark Tank. “It’s great today and only going to get better.”
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear arguments in a challenge brought by the NBA, seeking the reversal of a Second Circuit decision finding a concrete injury when a consumer’s information is disclosed to another business. The case centers on a lawsuit brought by Michael Salazar, who sued the NBA for tracking his activity on NBA.com and through its free newsletter, data it then shared with Meta to serve him targeted ads.
The Third, 10th and 11th Circuits have each held that a consumer does not have standing, ruling that federal courts cannot recognize “nonpublic, business-to-business disclosures” as harmful. The Sixth and Seventh Circuits have heard arguments in similar cases and are likely to reject the Second Circuit’s decision in looming opinions, the NBA said. The NBA challenged the Second Circuit’s finding that the Video Privacy Protection Act — a 1988 statue prohibiting the disclosure of a customer’s viewing history without their consent — could be extended to apply to individuals who watched videos without renting, buying or subscribing to it.
The NBA’s hypothesis about Generation App — that cord-cutters and cord-nevers will stream basketball games over linear’s dead body — is now looking more prescient. Data from Playfly Insights shows that roughly 15% of the league’s local broadcast audience last season watched through direct-to-consumer streaming apps, a significant gain that is expected to multiply again this season and is a precursor to the future of NBA consumption.
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Sources familiar with league metrics are seeing similar DTC data, while adding that the overall consumption of local NBA broadcasts now is roughly 30% through streaming and will likely rise soon to 50% — meaning half of the audience will be viewing games either on DTC apps, virtual MVPDs or digital-first platforms.
It’s clear, then, that streaming is going mainstream. Never mind the fact that every nationally televised game this season is on a digital platform (Peacock, the ESPN app or Prime Video), local streams are just as critical. The NBA, for instance, has claimed it has the youngest average fan base of any major league (39 years old) and that the 18-to-24 demographic is 33% more likely to access a subscription OTT service than pay TV.
Apple Vision Pro users will be able to experience select NBA games in an immersive way for the 2025-26 season, Apple announced on Friday. Some Los Angeles Lakers matches will be in Apple Immersive video, a format specifically for the headset. The company's release states, "Viewers will feel the intensity of each game as if they were courtside, with perspectives impossible to capture in traditional broadcasts. "
In addition to the NBA App, NBA.com and team apps and websites, Tap to Watch will provide access to game telecasts through national and local media partners and via other NBA partners such as Google, Meta, X, Snap, Reddit, Roku, Dapper Labs and more. Further integrations with FanDuel, Fanatics and Yahoo Sports, as well as other digital and connected TV partners, will roll out during the season.
The NBA has a relatively new tool called “automated officiating,” and the robotic eyes that are now tracking just about everything on basketball courts showed that James was nowhere near committing offensive basket interference on that play. It wasn’t needed to decide matters in that case — again, the humans got it right — but the NBA is tapping into technology more and more to ensure that plays like those get adjudicated correctly.
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Some referees have been wearing earpieces during this preseason as the league tinkers with ways for better communication methods. There’s been talk at the league of sending alerts to smartwatches about decisions on calls. And at summer league this year, there was even a sensor placed inside the ball to help collect data. The sensor weighs about the same as a raisin does. Hundreds of players used the ball, which typically weighs somewhere around 600 grams; nobody noticed that it was about a gram heavier than usual.
For the second time in two years, U.S. District Judge Jennifer L. Rochon has dismissed a lawsuit brought by a man who accuses the NBA of illegally using the Meta Pixel tracking tool to disclose his viewing of NBA.com videos. Whether the dismissal withstands an appellate challenge this time around remains to be seen, especially given the U.S. Supreme Court has been asked to review the case.
Jacob Rude: JJ Redick on ESPN LA on his desire to continue learning: “Number one, I do have a general curiosity about stuff. I’m the type of person who spends an hour-and-a-half going down a deep, deep rabbit hole on ChatGPT. It used to be Wikipedia but now it’s my friend, Chat.”
NBA Launchpad is now accepting applications for the fifth cohort of the league’s innovation-focused program in which companies pilot their technologies for six months with NBA and WNBA properties. Results are then shared during Demo Day presentations at NBA Summer League.
