It’s early still, but late enough somewhere that David Stern could be into his
second or third umbrella drink by now.
And since it’s been more than three years since Stern stepped down as NBA
commissioner, he truly could be anywhere. A Hawaiian shirt, a cabana chair, some
sun, some surf, all would seem proper rewards for a job well done.
Nope. Stern, 74, was in the Manhattan office he keeps these days, not far from
the Manhattan office he kept at Olympic Tower for so many years. Neckties are
optional now, but he still pulls from a vast closet full of Stern Collection
suits, remnants from his commish days.
He was at work, not all that different from some of his previous work, wrangling
the telephone, bantering with media folks, making sure his message was clear if
maybe a little less loud.
One of Stern’s many new ventures is the tech start-up SportsCastr.Live, a
streaming video platform that allowed users to call live games themselves or
hear announcers of their choosing.
Or as Stern put it, “Fans want what they want, on whatever device they want it,
whenever they want it.”
A founding investor, Stern spoke of the “second-screen experience” the
SportsCastr.Live developers had in mind.
“It’s a combination of people wanting to be in the action and also, you see so
much ‘personalization,'” he said. “Whether it’s the blogger you choose to read,
the podcast you choose to listen to, the Facebook feed you choose to follow, the
Twitter account you line up with, Instagram, there seems to something for
everyone in the social media space. And this is one more possibility, which
happens to feed off video and broadcast.”
Underlying the project is the premise that watching sports is a social
experience, even for someone alone at home. Eventually, the whole “second
screen” could merge with the first screen so SportsCastr.Live could work as a
picture-in-picture component of a game broadcast.
So one could summon Marv Albert from his quiet dinner in North Beach to call a
game that the network has assigned to Mike Breen? Uh, not quite.
“It’s more about ‘young Marv’ in a basement some place calling the game so he
can sharpen his skills so he can be a great announcer,” Stern said.
SportsCastr.Live will allow a budding sportscaster to overlay streams carrying
enhancements that update in real time and lend a professional look to the
presentation.
‘He really sees the big picture’
A viewer could pluck his choice of play-by-play calls from a crowd-sourced list
of announcers. Or fans of a given national team limited to an English-speaking
broadcast, for example, could seek out and hear instead someone calling the
event from their native land. And all of this could link up with Facebook or
Twitter or some other social-media account to involve friends.
Stern is just one of SportsCastr.Live’s high-profile partners. Other include
Syracuse men’s basketball coach Jim Boeheim and NFL tight end Vernon Davis.
“He really sees the big picture and has helped with positioning and the overall
vision,” SportsCastr.Live CEO Kevin April said of Stern. “I know what David
likes about this too is, any technology that connects people and drives people
to watching the live games — when it’s so easy just to get the highlights on
Snapchat or YouTube now — anything that facilitates that social experience that
we know sports are, he’s all about.”
Stern has been a curious consumer of and investor in technology for much of his
working life. “We used to call the NBA a learning organization,” he said. “We
were always pushing and learning. We did it when cable came in, making our first
cable deal in, I think, 1979. We did it with satellite. We did it with digital
cable. Frankly, we did it when this thing called the Internet came in with
NBA.com. And we did it when social media was upon us.
“Now there’s another generation of evolution, I would call it, in the way fans
want to absorb their sports.”
Stern has absorbed much about streaming, virtual reality, interactive viewing
and artificial intelligence. But that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a “true
believer.” Relative to analytics, he still sees the value in eye tests, “hot
hands,” teammate relationships and body language. He wonders about the potential
for data overload, with so much coming so fast. He also suspects the role of the
coach could be usurped, or at least significantly changed, the deeper this goes.
One ironic aspect of this endeavor is Stern becoming a colleague now of Donald
Schupak, a name that might resonate with some longtime NBA fans. Schupak, also
74 and a founding investor, represented Ozzie and Daniel Silna back in 1976.
Those two brothers, who owned owned the Spirits of St. Louis ABA team,
negotiated what long has been billed as the greatest deal in sports history.
When the NBA was merging with the ABA that year — and dissolving all but four
franchises (San Antonio Spurs, Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers, New Jersey Nets)
— Schupak advised the Silnas that they could do better than the $3 million
buyout the established league was offering. Instead, on top of a $2.2 million
payment, he negotiated a slice of future TV revenue paid out of the surviving
ABA teams’ shares “in perpetuity.” Those last two words proved fortuitous, to
the tune of annual payments estimated at more than $300 million over time. In
2014, the NBA, after repeated attempts through the years, got the Silnas to
accept a reported settlement of $500 million on top of the earlier payouts.
“I’ve been friendly with Donald since 1976, even though he was on the other side
of the transaction,” Stern said. “I had contact with him usually in an
adversarial position, but we remained cordial and professional throughout it
all. I ran into him and he said he had something we should talk about.
“So I said, ‘What d’ya got?’ He told he had invested a fair amount in this and
what it could do. I had no idea what he was talking about, but we had a second
meeting with this young man, Kevin April, who has babied this thing. Gradually,
I came to understand it — my deficiency, not theirs — and they and it
convinced me that this is something that could become a tremendous adjunct
sports deal in social-media way.”
Stern not lacking for responsibilities
Every so often, when talking about the NBA, a “we” slips into Stern’s
conversation. He still represents the league internationally on occasion. But as
he told the Associated Press the other day, “Nobody calls [at night], nobody
goes into the stands, nobody goes after their coach, nobody bumps an official.
My life has been purified.”
In addition to his interest in SportsCastr.Live and LiveLikeVR, a virtual
reality company, Stern stays busy with multiple gigs. He is a senior advisor to
Greycroft Partners, a venture capital fund that invests in “early-stage Internet
and mobile companies.” He serves in the same capacity with PJT Partners, a
global investment bank, and advises the technology, media and telecommunications
group of PricewaterhouseCoopers.
A few years ago, there had been some talk about Stern becoming an ambassador to
a foreign nation. But he seems to prefer his public profile in the private
sector.
“That’s not me,” he said. “I support in the political sphere. But I’m having too
much fun now.
“I’m as busy as I’ve ever been, day to day. Actually, it’s great fun to be able
to evolve with media developments. And it keeps you learning.”
Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here
and follow him on Twitter.
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