NBA League Pass

NBA League Pass is a sports television service that features all National Basketball Association games. The service is operated by Turner Broadcasting System on behalf of the NBA. It was made available prior to the start of the 1995-1996 NBA season. It is available to viewers in the United States and as an international package for all other countries. The pricing structure and services on offer are different, depending on where the viewer is located. The 2013-14 season was the 20th year of League Pass.[1] Full League Pass access for the 2014-15 season was priced at $199 for US customers, for comparison the premium service was £169.99 for UK viewers (these prices are for access to the full season prior to the first game and before any discounts, in previous seasons prices have dropped as the season moves closer towards the play-offs).[2]

NBA League Pass logo

United States League Pass

NBA League Pass is an out-of-market sports package that allows its subscribers to watch up to 40 out-of-market National Basketball Association games a week. Videos of the games come from local stations and regional sports networks.

League Pass comes in three varieties in the United States: NBA League Pass TV, which plays the games through a cable or satellite TV provider; NBA League Pass Broadband, which uses highspeed Internet connection to stream videos to a computer; and NBA League Pass Mobile, which is for mobile devices.

Customers outside the United States can sign up for NBA International League Pass.

Blackout restrictions
See also: NBA blackout policy

If a local team is playing and the game is televised in the home market, the associated feed on League Pass is blacked out and unavailable for viewing.

Per the NBA.com website: “Games will also be blacked out when they are appearing on national television. This applies to games being televised on ABC, ESPN, TNT and NBA TV. You may view these games simply by switching to the designated channel.”

In Canada, Bulls games on WGN-TV are not blacked out.

NBA League Pass availability in the US

NBA League Pass TV is available with these cable, satellite and streaming providers in the United States:

Most providers who offer subscriptions to League Pass TV also include NBA TV and a companion League Pass Broadband subscription. It is also included in some cable subscriptions.

NBA International League Pass

NBA International League Pass is available to users living outside the United States, and differs from the US version of the product in its content, packaging, and pricing. While both the US and international products feature games available for live or on-demand viewing, the major distinction between the two products is that International League Pass provides access to all NBA games played during the regular season, All Star Weekend, Playoffs, and Finals, free from blackout restrictions. The single exception to this offering is in Canada, where games televised nationally are blacked out live and are available for on-demand viewing only after the game is completed.[3] International League Pass also provides access to games from previous seasons through archives.[4]

International users have the option of subscribing to several package options, varying by region: NBA League Pass, League Pass Premium, Team Choice, Game Choice, and 3-Game Choice. Subscribers to all packages are able to watch NBA games from Summer League, preseason, regular season, All Star Weekend, Playoffs, and Finals live or on-demand from a variety of devices, including desktop computers, iPhones, iPads, Android phones and tablets, and TV-connected devices like Apple TV, Android TV, Google Chromecast, Xbox and PlayStation consoles (the platforms supported differ by country).[5] Subscribers are also able to use in-game features including multi-game viewing, stats windows, and a condensed game feature that only includes scoring and highlight plays. Additional features, such as access to NBA TV and multi-device streaming, vary by subscription.

Beginning in the 2014-15 season, NBA International League Pass introduced continuous game feeds for selected games and all home feeds, which replaced the game break videos (highlights, commercials, etc.) shown during play breaks with highlight clips, live footage of in-arena activities including dance team performances, half-time entertainment, fans in the crowd, and interviews or features produced by the local broadcaster.

International Packages and Promotions

In addition to the standard and Premium packages, users also have the option to purchase a stand-alone streaming subscription to NBA TV International, which broadcasts games, studio shows, press conferences, and other basketball content.[6] In past seasons, International League Pass has also offered sampling packages that provide stand-alone access to Christmas Day games and All Star Weekend events. The last several weeks of the regular season have also been made available in a separate "Race to the Playoffs" package.

During the off-season, both International League Pass and International League Pass Premium subscribers have live and on-demand access to Summer League games and certain games or scrimmages played by the USA Basketball team in preparation for or during the Olympics and the FIBA World Cup tournament, in addition to continued access to past NBA regular seasons in archives. This summer content has also been sold as a stand-alone package.

International League Pass offers a rolling free trial of the product throughout the season, allowing first time users to preview the League Pass experience before purchasing.

NBA League Pass availability outside the US

Note: Subscriptions can be bought in most regions via the Internet to be streamed to applications on various devices or to a browser (see above for list). Some of the following services include League Pass, either fully or partially, but they are not required to view League Pass.

Applications, Features and Platforms supported

Apps are currently available for:

For the 2013-14 season, League Pass's apps were updated with the ability to select home and away feeds on all games, and video-on-demand access for games broadcast nationally.[1][8]

For the 2016-17 season, a new feature known as "Mobile View" was introduced, which allows viewers to access a special feed of the home telecast with optimizations for viewing on smartphones. The Mobile View feed will utilize a new dedicated camera angle with a tighter, zoomed-in shot of gameplay. The league will provide a camera and a producer for the feature at each regular-season game, who will have access to the special camera and all others in use for the production.[9][10]

WNBA Season Pass
Former WNBA Season Pass logo

From 1999 to 2001, NBA League Pass had a companion service called WNBA Season Pass which showed out-of-market games of the Women's National Basketball Association. The WNBA has discontinued this service; today, all national broadcasts are on ABC, ESPN2, or NBA TV. However, they now offer the WNBA Broadband Season Pass, a web program that allows subscribers to watch every game live for each season.[11]

Summer League Pass

The 2013 NBA Summer League was available as a streaming subscription service with an app' for IOS and Android devices in the 2013 off-season. Priced at $14.99, all 61 games[12] in both the Orlando Pro Summer League and the Las Vegas League were included in the price.[13] Summer League is now included as part of the standard League Pass offering internationally.

See also

References
  1. Whitaker, Lang. blogs.nba.com "New NBA League Pass Features Announced". Accessed 5th October 2013
  2. "Subscription - NBA Game Time". nba,com. 8 August 2014. Retrieved 8 August 2014.
  3. "NBAILP Support". Archived from the original on 1 November 2014. Retrieved 23 March 2015.
  4. watch.NBA.com - Subscription: NBA GAME TIME. Accessed March 23, 2015 (note: accessed from an Australian IP. The page will differ by region).
  5. "NBAILP Support". Retrieved 23 March 2015.
  6. "NBA TV Live". Retrieved 23 March 2015.
  7. NBA Game Time, blog.playstation.com
  8. Pollakoff, Brett. "NBA makes new League Pass features official, all nationally televised games now archived". Pro Basketball Talk (NBC Sports). Accessed October 5, 2013
  9. "NBA Installs Extra Camera, Adds Dedicated Producer to Each Game for New 'NBA Mobile View' Feature". Sports Video Group. Retrieved 25 October 2016.
  10. "NBA League Pass is launching Mobile View to make it more enjoyable to watch games on your phone". TechCrunch. AOL. Retrieved 25 October 2016.
  11. "WNBA.com: WNBA Broadband Season Pass Info". www.wnba.com. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
  12. nba.com "John Henson Named to 2013 All-NBA Summer League Team". Accessed: October 2nd 2013.
  13. NBA.com. "NBA TV to televise 62 Summer League games, title game". Accessed; October 2nd, 2013.
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