NBA League Pass

NBA League Pass logo

The NBA League Pass is sports television service that features all National Basketball Association games. It is available to viewers in the United States and as an international package for all other countries. The pricing structure and services on offer are different, depending on where the viewer is located. The 2013-14 season was the 20th year of League Pass.[1] Full League Pass access for the 2014-15 season was priced at $199 for US customers, for comparison the premium service was £169.99 for UK viewers (these prices are for access to the full season prior to the first game and before any discounts, in previous seasons prices have dropped as the season moves closer towards the play-offs).[2]

United States League Pass

NBA League Pass is an out-of-market sports package that allows its subscribers to watch up to 40 out-of-market National Basketball Association games a week. The service is operated by Turner Broadcasting System on behalf of the NBA. Videos of the games come from local stations and regional sports networks.

League Pass comes in three varieties in the United States: NBA League Pass TV, which plays the games through a cable or satellite TV provider; NBA League Pass Broadband, which uses highspeed Internet connection to stream videos to a computer; and NBA League Pass Mobile, which is for mobile devices.

Broadband packages have been plagued with problems from their inception, particularly with their implementations on gaming consoles and tablet applications.[3] [4] [5]

Customers outside of the United States can sign up for NBA International League Pass.

Blackout restrictions

If a local team is playing and the game is televised in the home market, the associated feed on League Pass is blacked out and unavailable for viewing.

Per the NBA.com website: “Games will also be blacked out when they are appearing on national television. This applies to games being televised on ABC, ESPN, Fox Sports, TNT and NBA TV. You may view these games simply by switching to the designated channel.”

NBA League Pass availability in the US

NBA League Pass TV is available with these cable and satellite providers in the United States:

Most providers who offer subscriptions to League Pass TV also include NBA TV and a companion League Pass Broadband subscription. It is also included in some cable subscriptions.

NBA International League Pass

NBA International League Pass is available to users living outside the United States, and differs from the US version of the product in its content, packaging, and pricing. While both the US and international products feature games available for live or on-demand viewing, the major distinction between the two products is that International League Pass provides access to all NBA games played during the regular season, All Star Weekend, Playoffs, and Finals, free from blackout restrictions. The single exception to this offering is in Canada, where games televised nationally are blacked out live and are available for on-demand viewing only after the game is completed.[6] International League Pass also provides access to games from previous seasons through archives.[7]

International users have the option of subscribing to one of two packages: NBA League Pass and NBA League Pass Premium. Subscribers to both packages are able to watch all NBA games from the regular season, All Star Weekend, Playoffs, and Finals live or on-demand from a variety of devices, including desktop computers, iPhones, iPads, Android phones and tablets, and TV-connected devices like Apple TV, Google Chromecast, Xbox and PlayStation consoles (the platforms supported differ by country).[8] Subscribers to both packages are also able to use in-game features including multi-game viewing, stats windows, and a condensed game feature that only includes scoring and highlight plays. Subscribers to the Premium package gain additional features, including access to a live stream of NBA TV International, additional NBA VOD content in the "Video Vault" including TNT's Overtime studio show, Spanish language feeds for certain games, and the option to choose between the broadcasts of the home or away team.

Beginning in the 2014-15 season, NBA International League Pass introduced continuous game feeds for selected games and all home feeds, which replaced the game break videos (highlights, commercials, etc.) shown during play breaks with highlight clips, live footage of in-arena activities including dance team performances, half-time entertainment, fans in the crowd, and interviews or features produced by the local broadcaster. Included with this footage is a statistics feed providing stats updates from around the league.

International Packages and Promotions

In addition to the standard and Premium packages, users also have the option to purchase a stand-alone streaming subscription to NBA TV International, which broadcasts games, studio shows, press conferences, and other basketball content.[9] In past seasons, International League Pass has also offered sampling packages that provide stand-alone access to Christmas Day games and All Star Weekend events. The last several weeks of the regular season have also been made available in a separate "Race to the Playoffs" package.

During the off-season, both International League Pass and International League Pass Premium subscribers have live and on-demand access to Summer League games and certain games or scrimmages played by the USA Basketball team in preparation for or during the Olympics and the FIBA World Cup tournament, in addition to continued access to past NBA regular seasons in archives. This summer content has also been sold as a stand-alone package.

During the 2014-15 season, International League Pass offered a free trial of the product during the first week of the regular season and at the halfway point of the regular season, and other promotional free previews have been made available at various points in the season.

NBA League Pass availability outside of the US

Note: Subscriptions can be bought in most regions via the Internet to be streamed to applications on various devices or to a browser (see above for list). Some of the following services include League Pass, either fully or partially, but they are not required to view League Pass.

Applications, Features and Platforms supported

Apps are currently available for:

Live feeds, highlights and condensed games can also be viewed through a browser, at watch.nba.com (subscription required).

On October 2, 2013 the new League Pass service for the 2013/14 season was officially announced, with a revised app released on October 4 to include the new features. According to the official NBA press release League Pass provides fans "with new features including direct access to a national game archive featuring all televised games on ABC, ESPN, TNT, and NBA TV throughout the regular season, and live feeds of both home and away team broadcasts for all games".[11]

A new feature is the ability to select which audio feed you want from the game, so fans may choose to listen to their "hometown" commentary instead of being forced to listen to the audio broadcast by the local broadcast station.[12] The Game Time app now has Twitter integration and feeds for each game can be displayed without leaving the client.[13]

WNBA Season Pass

Former WNBA Season Pass logo

From 1999 to 2001, NBA League Pass had a companion service called WNBA Season Pass which showed out-of-market games of the Women's National Basketball Association. The WNBA has discontinued this service; today, all national broadcasts are on ABC, ESPN2, or NBA TV. However, they now offer the WNBA Broadband Season Pass, a web program that allows subscribers to watch every game live for each season.[14]

Summer League Pass

The 2013 NBA Summer League was available as a streaming subscription service with an app' for IOS and Android devices in the 2013 off-season. Priced at $14.99, all 61 games[15] in both the Orlando Pro Summer League and the Las Vegas League were included in the price.[16]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Whitaker, Lang. blogs.nba.com "New NBA League Pass Features Announced". Accessed 5th October 2013
  2. ↑ "Subscription - NBA Game Time". nba,com. 8 August 2014. Retrieved 8 August 2014.
  3. ↑ http://deadspin.com/5956559/nba-league-pass-broadband-is-shit-and-you-should-not-buy-it/1457644137/@marchman
  4. ↑ http://deadspin.com/nba-league-pass-broadband-2013-14-still-shitty-you-sh-1464685027
  5. ↑ https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nbadigital.gametimebig&hl=en
  6. ↑ "NBAILP Support". Retrieved 23 March 2015.
  7. ↑ watch.NBA.com - Subscription: NBA GAME TIME. Accessed March 23 2015 (note: accessed from an Australian IP. The page will differ by region).
  8. ↑ "NBAILP Support". Retrieved 23 March 2015.
  9. ↑ "NBA TV Live". Retrieved 23 March 2015.
  10. ↑ NBA Game Time, blog.playstation.com
  11. ↑ Whitaker, Lang. blogs.nba.com "New NBA League Pass Features Announced". Accessed 5th October 2013
  12. ↑ Pollakoff, Brett. NBAsports.com. "NBA makes new League Pass features official, all nationally televised games now archived". Accessed 5th October 2013.
  13. ↑ itunes.apple.com - "NBA Game Time 2013-2014". Accessed 5th October 2013.
  14. ↑ http://www.wnba.com/broadband/bsp_info.html
  15. ↑ nba.com "John Henson Named to 2013 All-NBA Summer League Team". Accessed: October 2nd 2013.
  16. ↑ NBA.com. "NBA TV to televise 62 Summer League games, title game". Accessed; October 2nd, 2013.

External links