[Rankin] ... Kevin Durant continuing to address #NBA viewership being down. "I take this serious. I'm locked in as to why people don't want to watch us play."

https://x.com/DuaneRankin/status/1872176949801504956?t=sOlhzun3lYo5ImePn8Xpwg&s=19

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u/Neemzeh Timberwolves 2d ago

The NBA has put itself into a box though, with player salaries, salary cap, expenses, etc. They basically have to use their existing models or the networks wont pay them as much. If they don't pay as much, they'll probably lose revenue. IDK tho, I'm sure someone with an economic background can explain more accessibility vs. networks paying and whether one will make more than the other. I'd imagine the NBA has crunched these numbers and still think its better for them financially to do it this way, viewership be damned.

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u/Skunk_Gunk [CLE] LeBron James 2d ago

The biggest thing that leagues don’t account for when going this route is that they are losing the next generation of fans by doing this. People rarely start to follow teams/leagues unless they grow up with it. The league needs to think about the next 20 years just not the next quarter, could say this about 90% of companies though to be fair.

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u/QuietRainyDay 2d ago

99% of companies

They've all been poisoned by finance/accounting departments that have reduced every single strategic decision to short-term profitability metrics.

They'll pretend like they care about the long term. But the way finance works makes long-term thinking almost impossible. It's simply too hard to accurately quantify the value of long-term investments and radical new ideas.

Even relatively wise executives who understand that some long-term decision must be based on something beyond Excel spreadsheets get overruled.

Source: used to be a finance bro that built the stupidass Excel spreadsheets that trampled so many good ideas (regrettably)

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u/OverlyPersonal Warriors 2d ago

If you were the finance bro why are you lumping accountants in? Don't blame us for your bullshit

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u/QuietRainyDay 2d ago

Well I dont blame you personally for it but yall are in it- you know how many times your oftentimes arbitrary rules skew important business decisions.

Product return reserves and return estimates, warranty and defective product estimates, nebulous cost allocations for things like customer support that affect margin calculations in all kinds of screwy ways (reasonable basis... come on man). It was many years ago and I still have clear memories of these things getting tweaked in the Excel spreadsheets and wreaking havoc on things business leads wanted to do.

Don't act like accounting rules are natural law, they as screwy as everything FP&A does. It's just that your stuff is codified in big, thick books and that gives it a veneer of respectability.

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u/OverlyPersonal Warriors 2d ago

Whatever makes you feel better, even if you can blame 5% of what you're talking about on the accountants that still leaves 95% of the bullshit in FP&A's court.

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u/Salty_Compote5873 2d ago

Both of your departments are just instruments used as tools for shareholder value maximisation ™️