Coming into the 2022-23 season with the fifth best odds of winning the next NBA Championship, the Los Angeles Clippers will be second to no one this year in terms of offering video access of their games to fans.
The team, which just agreed to show 11 of its regular season games on Nexstar's free over-the-air broadcast station KTLA-TV, and which also just renewed its regional sports network deal with Sinclair Broadcast Group's Bally Sports SoCal, is also going over-the-top and direct-to-consumer all on its own with ClippersVision.
Also read: What Does the Return of the Clippers to Broadcast TV Mean to the RSN Business?
The new service, available to Southern California sports fans starting Monday at www.clippers.com/clippervision, is priced at $199.99 for the entire season ($17 a month).
The app includes access to 74 regular season games falling within the confines of the Clippers' national broadcast TV allotment, with live video and announcer feeds coming from either KTLA or Bally Sports.
The special sauce comes in the form of "CourtVision," an augment reality tech already used internally for several years by the Clippers that deploys AI and machine learning to layer graphical data over the live game video.
Clippers owner Steve Ballmer was enthralled several years ago by the tech and has been determined to share it with fans.
There's also "BallerVision," which will add live game commentary from the likes of former Clippers star players, including Baron Davis, Jamal Crawford, Quentin Richardson, Matt Barnes and Paul Pierce, along with Ballmer, a Microsoft co-founder.
Also included are separate Korean- and Spanish-language live-game announcing feeds.
The streaming app is built on the NBA's new digital backbone and is supported by desktop, iOS and Android mobile, as well as connected TV platforms including Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Chromecast, Apple TV (OS 14+), Comcast Xfinity Flex, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X.
Notably, streaming access to Clippers games is already available sans pay TV subscription via RSN Bally Sports and its new Bally Sports DTC app.
According to the Clippers, ClipperVision was developed in partnership with Bally Sports, but the team didn't disclose details about the financial nature of that relationship.
Certainly, it must have complicated the Clippers' recently signed deal to remain on Bally Sports SoCal, an agreement that wasn't announced until several weeks before this week's start to the NBA regular season.
ClipperVision's first live stream will come on Saturday, Oct. 22, when the Clippers visit the Sacramento Kings.
“I have wanted to create a product like ClipperVision since the day I came to the Clippers," Ballmer said. "Years of effort, hard work and development have led up to its launch."
