LAS VEGAS — The NBA Cup will be back next season. It is a key reason Amazon Prime Video paid so much money for broadcast rights fees, as it became home to the league’s early-season tournament — and ratings were up 90% this year, according to the league.
However, the NBA Cup championship game may not return to Las Vegas next year.
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The league is considering moving the championship game next year, a story broken by Tim Bontemps of ESPN and confirmed by other reports. The decision had already been made to move next year’s semifinal games — played this year on a Saturday in Vegas — to the home market of the higher-seeded team. While the league remains committed to a neutral-site Finals, that may not be in Las Vegas.
In a city all about big, buzzy events — such as the recent F1 race that takes over the Strip — talk to locals, and there is very little buzz about the NBA Cup. Whatever the announced attendance for games, there are sections of the upper bowl that are empty during the semifinals, and there has been a concern that the empty seats and a more neutral crowd (most fans are not traveling for these games, the building is filled with locals) can come across as too low energy on the broadcast. To be fair, there was a better crowd and energy for the second semifinal Saturday — maybe that was because it featured Victor Wembanyama and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, or maybe the 6 p.m. local start time was better than the 2:30 p.m. start time for the Knicks game.
The T-Mobile Arena was filled and loud in the tournament’s first year, 2023, but that’s because the Lakers were in it — Las Vegas is a Lakers city, plus it is a short trip for Lakers fans in Southern California to come out for a day or two and see a game. The atmosphere has been different since, even with an international brand with a large fan base such as the New York Knicks playing in the NBA Cup finals on Tuesday.
The league’s challenge becomes: Where are they going to move the title game that’s better? Put the game in Seattle for a year? Move it around the nation to non-NBA cities and see if they get excited about it? Is that going to generate more buzz?
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The NBA Cup has primarily done what Adam Silver and the league hoped it would — it gave more meaning to some early-season games, it got more people to talk about the league before Christmas, it motivated players (giving the players on the championship team $530,000 will do that), and it created some buzz around the game. The tournament has been a hit with the core NBA fan base, and it’s at least gotten some more casual fans to pay attention. However, the reaction on the ground in Las Vegas has not been what the league hoped. l
There are no easy answers here, but the league has maintained flexibility — it does not have a contract locked in to bring the NBA Cup back to Las Vegas in a year. The NBA and Amazon Prime Video can come together to assess their options and decide if it is time to be leaving Las Vegas.
