Some misguided NBA enthusiasts on the social internet reveled Wednesday at the possibility of future NBA Finals telecasts no longer festooned with the omnipresent YouTube TV logo, perhaps assuming the ascendance of Comcast’s Xfinity pay TV platform as the league’s “Official TV Service” meant that the Google/Alphabet-owned vMVPD's marketing role had somehow been replaced.
But that's not what's happening, a league source told Next TV Thursday.
It is true that as part of the NBA’s new $2.5 billion-a-season deal with Comcast's NBCUniversal unit, Comcast Cable’s Xfinity brand will become the “official TV service” of the NBA, WNBA and USA Basketball (despite the fact that more than 2 million users bolted the platform in 2023 alone).
“The partnership includes collaboration on marketing and storytelling opportunities, virtual signage during game telecasts and activations at marquee NBA, WNBA and USA Basketball events,” the league said in an announcement about the broader deal.
YouTube TV has paid to occupy the role of "presenting sponsor" of the NBA Finals since 2018, and that role is not changing, our source told us, noting that the Google and NBCU deals “are not in conflict.”
That won’t be welcome news to everyone.
After watching the 2023 NBA Finals featuring the Denver Nuggets and Miami Heat, Awful Announcing writer Devin Raab noted: “The degree to which these ads are omnipresent is breathtaking even by modern sports standards. For starters, the NBA Finals logo itself has ‘Presented by YouTube TV’ officially attached underneath it, meaning that every time you see that logo in branding either throughout the stadium or in graphics, you are also seeing the gaudy, red YouTube TV logo. There are also, throughout these broadcasts, commercial spots for YouTube TV and narrated voiceovers explaining that these games are sponsored by YouTube TV. You would think this would be sufficient, that this alone would represent so much product placement that any more would be overkill; after all, by tethering the YouTube TV logo to the Finals logo, you’re seeing it almost everywhere you look throughout the stadium, including the stanchion of the hoop and the chairs the players are sitting on. But oh no, this is merely the tip of the iceberg.”
