Aidan W.

Final Draft

Basketball is a sport that has been popular for over 100 years, and today is still one of the most popular

sports in the world. Although there are many professional leagues, the NBA is by far the most popular in

not only the United States, but the world. Basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith, he

originally created it as a less injury-prone sport than football. The original game established very quick

and became very popular over the next century. Basketball in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s was very

different than the game we know today.

Prior to 1898, all games were played recreationally, but after 1898, the first professional league was

formed. From Wikipedia: There was only six teams and they played for the first championship the same

year. The NBA as we know it today was founded in New York City, on June 6th, 1946. They adopted the

name NBA (National Basketball Association) three years after. In 1976, pretty much the main competitor

in viewers and fan attendance, the ABA (American Basketball Association) merged with the NBA to

become a much larger league with more competition and variety. Since 1976, not much involving the

league has changed besides teams moving locations and small things.

In 1979, the league adopted what would revolutionize and shape the league today; the three pointer.

In today’s NBA, the best scorers are mostly the ones who can shoot threes. I can back this up with

evidence from basketballreference.com as Stephen Curry is widely known as a 3 point shooter, he won

back to back MVP’s in 2015 and 2016. He led the league in scoring in 2016, with a total of 2,375 points.

There are many more things that shape the history of the NBA, such as Championships, players and

money. Before Michael Jordan, the NBA’s viewers were average or less, since Jordan started playing in

the 80’s, the viewers spiked a massive 300%, making the NBA one of the most popular leagues and

basketball one of the most popular sports in the world. Following the most important aspect of the sport,

which is the origin, is the salaries.

 The average household income for an American citizen is around $56,000 dollars (as of 2017) .

According to thebalancecareers.com: the average salary for an NBA player is 6.2 million dollars (as of

2016). That is a 6 million dollar gap between the two salaries. NBA players make the most money

compared to any other sports in the world. For example, LeBron James just signed a 4 year, $153 million

dollar contract with the Los Angeles Lakers, meaning his yearly pay will be around $33 million dollars.

It is crazy to think about how being so good at basketball and competing at a high level can make

you an absurd amount of money. The highest paid athlete in the NBA is actually Stephen Curry, who

makes around 34 million dollars per year, after signing a 5 year, $201 million dollar contract with the

Golden State Warriors. It is not only the players that are being paid well too, but the coaches are as well.

The average NBA head coach makes on average 7 million dollars per year. That’ still a lot of money for

being just the coach and not being the one running up and down the court at all times.

The minimum an NBA player can be payed is just 1 million dollars and that is when you first enter

the league. In the near future we should be seeing contract numbers sky rocket due to a growing NBA.

Contract numbers will be over 1 billion within the next 20 years. Comparing NBA money to our money is

insane. Say an NBA player gets a 20,000 dollar fine from the league for his actions. That’s literally a

parking ticket to an average NBA player, that won’t even put a dent in there bank account.

NBA player and coach contracts are insane. One could only dream to make 10+ million dollars a

year plus more from partnerships, endorsements, etc… From playing your favorite sport you could

become a millionaire. Who would have thought hundreds of years ago people could make that money

from shooting a ball in a hoop. What comes with Salaries are large tax bills.
 Taxes are something every human in most countries around the world will have to pay at some

point in there lives. Taxes are a amount of money taken from your paycheck, purchases etc… that goes to

the government. NBA players pay millions throughout a season in taxes.

An example is Stephen Curry of the Warriors: his base salary per year as of now comes in around

$37.5 million dollars. The state tax rate for california is 13.3%, meaning Stephen will have to pay around

3 million in taxes to his state alone. That is an absurd amount of money to be paying in taxes. Meaning

that all the large contracts you see in the NBA which are 100+ million dollars over a stretch of 4-5 years,

are actually a lot less money than you think.

An NBA player will only take in a small sum of the money you hear about. For example in New

York the tax rate is about 9%, meaning if I make 100 dollars, around 9 dollars will be taken out of my

paycheck. If I made $100 million then around $9 million will be taken out. NBA players make big bucks

but pay big bills as well. Without a doubt you have experienced basketball in some way.

Nearly everyone at some point in their life has been to a sports game. Maybe not professionals but

high school/middle school sports for sure. Usually for students to get into a game it is free, but possibly

you could have had to pay a small amount of money ($5 max) to get into a game. But if you have been to

a professional game, the ticket prices are way higher than that, and the whole arena/stadium is filled as

well. Professional sports leagues make a lot of money from ticket sales and set their prices quite high.

Last year on March 20th, 2018, I went to an NBA game. It was Celtics vs. Thunder, I went with

two friends and one of their mothers. I got the tickets as a christmas gift and the game was really good,

but the tickets were expensive, over $145 dollars each. We also did not have very good seats, we were in
the “nosebleeds”, but the whole TD Garden was packed to the max. The average NBA ticket according to

barrystickets.com is $89.00 as of the 2018-2018 season. The average NBA arena can seat about 20,000

people according to the informationdiet.blogspot.com. So if you do the math 89 dollars times 20,000

people the number is 1.7 million. I would say that is probably on the low end for money they make per

game just from ticket sales but it is probably somewhat accurate. Since ticket prices can go up and down

depending on the teams playing and the time they play during it is hard to get an exact number on how

much they make on average per game.

NBA games are somewhat on the expensive side, but for the athletes to make all the money they

do they need to get the money somewhere. Ticket Prices and Sales are not even close to the only way that

the NBA makes there big money. Branding makes them a good chunk of it too. Not only are the games

priced so high, but they have good reason considering how popular it really is.

Basketball or early forms of it have been around for over a century, with the first version of it

being created in 1891 by Dr. James Naismith, and now today the most modern version of it. Basketball is

one of the most popular sports on Earth, with being able to play Basketball video games such as 2k sports,

and being able to go to a court and shoot; Basketball is all around us.

Nearly everyone at some point in their lives have heard, seen or played basketball is some way.

With the National Basketball Association generating over $7.4 billion last season, that just shows how

much money the sport can bring in. The NBA is by far the most popular and known basketball league, but

is basketball the most popular sport? Well according to worldatlas.com, Basketball is the 7th most popular

sport on Earth, the estimated amount of people that are considered fans is 825 million. But that does not

even compare to soccer, where there is an estimated 4 billion fans. Even though it is not the most popular
in the world, it is in fact the most popular in the United States, to watch and play. Basketball is played in

nearly every single high school across the U.S., if you think about it, I am sure at some point in your life

you have watched Basketball in some way shape or form.

With the NBA bringing in $7+ billion in revenue per year and basketball being estimated to have a

fan base of of 825+ million people, I think it is safe to say that Basketball is one of the most popular

sports on Earth. I myself play and enjoy basketball, but am also a big fan of it as well, I keep up with the

NBA daily. Everyone at some point in their lives will have played or at least watched a Basketball game.

With popularity, it comes to no surprise there is things people don’t like about basketball, such as

officiating.

Officiating such as Umpires and Referees, are needed for every single sport involving a team. In

Basketball there are refs, they have the power to do anything pretty much, from throwing players out of

the game to calling fouls on players they in a way shape the game of basketball as it is today. Without refs

in basketball, there would be little to no way of scoring a basket as players could just foul you to prevent

it everytime, this is why refs are important. Without them Basketball would be an all out brawl where

people could get seriously injured.

In an NBA game there is normally a three person crew officiating the game, but there can be two.

The average salary for a ref is anywhere from 150-500 thousand dollars per year. That is not including all

the travel expenses needed for transportation during the postseason and what not. Not only can refs make

a lot of money but they can throw players out of the game for doing something bad such as getting a

Flagrant Foul, which is an intentional foul in the means to hurt another player. If they throw them out, it is

more likely than not that they get fined $5000+. For Refs to do their job successfully, they need to be in
shape, I thought this was a pretty interesting fact because they have to run up and down the court just as

much as the players.

Officiating can be pretty difficult, I am sure if you are a sports fan you have gotten mad at an

officials call on the game (Im guilty to this too). But at the end of the day they are not perfect and can’t

see every tiny detail that goes on during the game. They are bound to miss calls and plays every now and

then. Without officiating, basketball would be a completely different organized sport as we know it. To

actually watch officiating, you would have to watch basketball, how many people in fact do watch

basketball? Let’s check some broadcast numbers.

The sport of basketball is very popular around the world, so popular in fact it is broadcasted on

live TV daily. At some point or another, you have watched a basketball game on TV. The NBA

broadcasts games everyday in their regular season, sometimes 5+ at once on different stations, but have

you ever thought of how many people actually are watching those games at once? Let me help you out by

telling.

We are only going to be focusing on the NBA and are going to compare the NBA numbers to a

couple other popular sport leagues. As of the 2017-2018 season, the average viewership per regular

season game was about 8.5 million viewers (via ABC, TNT, ESPN, NBA TV), that is very hard to wrap

your head around, 8.5 million viewers on average PER game. But that doesn’t compare to the most

watched NBA playoff game. It is hard to pinpoint the exact average amount of viewers for the NBA

playoffs due to illegally streaming which is high in the playoffs. But the highest amount of people

watching a playoff game on TV was 16 million, the Oklahoma City Thunder vs. Golden State Warriors in

2016. But do these numbers compare to the NFL? No actually the highest viewed NFL regular season
game as of 2018 was the Cowboys vs. Redskins, with 30.5 million viewers. So the NBA does have lots of

viewers, but it doesn’t compare to the NFL.

The low viewership numbers compared to the NFL may have to do with the NFL being only 16

games per team, and the NBA having 82 per team, both per season. This would mean that viewers would

be more dedicated to football because of it not being on everyday. But the NBA does still have broadcast

numbers that are crazy to think about. With TV deals and broadcasts, NBA also has many many

sponsorships.

With the NBA being a multi-billion dollar organization, they are bound to partner with other

multi-million/billion dollar companies. The NBA is the biggest basketball organization in the entire

world, companies are eager to partner with them because of the attention they will get.

According to sportsbussinessdaily .com, the NBA as of 2018 has 26 league-level partner ships

ranging from things such as; Kia Motors and Gatorade. There is much much more partnerships as well,

big companies such as Nike, Foot Locker and Taco Bell. With the NBA building up a $7.4 billion dollar

average revenue, you would think that some of the money comes from sponsorships, but actually they

don’t total that in the NBA revenue. In 2015 the NBA signed a 8 year $1 billion contract with Nike, and

according to investopedia .com , Nike started carrying the official uniforms around this time (they make

and advertise themselves on NBA uniforms). Also according to investopedia, in the 2016-2017 season

alone the NBA racked up approximately $861 million dollars, from big brands such as State Farm

insurance.
 With all of the partnerships, ticket sales, TV deals etc… the NBA is bound to be a multi-billion

dollar Association. The average NBA franchise (there are 30) is now worth over $1 billion dollars. It is

crazy to think about how playing a game of basketball can make you and your company unbelievable

amounts of money. In a simple summary of all basketball related topics I covered, the most significant is

the salaries. All the topics I covered actually had little to nothing to do with the actual playing of the sport

itself, rather aspects of the great game called basketball. Salaries and the money in general is the driving

force of the NBA.

The NBA is one of the richest, most popular and fun sports leagues in the world, they are very

successful and their players get money and a lot of it. Without the NBA, all aspects of life would be

different in the United States. People don’t actually understand what goes on behind the scenes of the

NBA, they like to watch for the pure enjoyment and entertainment of the sport, while there is some people

like me who like to look at other aspects of the sport on top of actually playing. With the NBA being a

multi billion dollar organization, there is bound to be many other things going on.