Last October 17, the LA Clippers unveiled a proprietary streaming service called Clipper Vision, the brainchild of the basketball team’s CEO Steve Ballmer. The latter, who is a former Microsoft CEO, said that the NBA must take on the important role of shaping and improving the viewing experience of basketball fans.
In an interview with GeekWire, CEO Ballmer said that there is a need to delineate the future of basketball viewership. After all, it is something that the league can do better than distribution channels like Amazon, ESPN or TNT. Improvement of viewing experience includes Augmented Reality (AR), in Spanish language, in Korean language, live commentary, plus a limited edition-team jacket for early subscribers.
Although Clipper Vision is currently available only in Los Angeles at a yearly subscription fee of $199.99, Clippers CEO Ballmer says it is likely that other basketball teams will follow suit. Actually, Clipper Vision is built on the NextGen platform of the NBA, using other shared technologies.
While the technology is available only to viewers in the Los Angeles market, it provides access to all the team’s games but excluding those covered by national broadcasting services.
Aside from the improved viewing service, providing fans with a single platform from where subscriptions-weary Clippers fans can access all the team’s games and various related content. As it is, fans have to pay monthly fees to access various chunks of Clipper contents from different streaming channels and content aggregators like Netflix and Hulu.
Ballmer considers the Clipper Vision approach, a reflection of the way Netizens are consuming media content. He opines that there is no reason to fight the growing trend of mass customization and mass personalization as every content is geared toward targeting a particular type of audience.
Will Proprietary Streaming Platforms Affect Social Media Viewership?
Still, even if Clipper Vision’s content is streamed directly to subscribers, promoters and endorsers of NBA-related products can benefit from Tik Tok’s For You feed in reaching different types of potential consumers.
This is actually the reason why the social media site’s popularity is growing. Here, every uploaded content gets its fair share of exposure across relevant Tik Tok users. Competition is stiff though, as Tik Tok compensates uploaders who get to amass at least 1,000 views. In order to monetize the video clips, not a few Tik Tokers invest on marketing strategies that offer to buy tiktok followers who will accelerate account growth.