Diehard basketball fans love to keep their fingers on the pulse of every team in the NBA.
From injuries to trades to understanding who is getting hot at the right time for sports betting, the NBA season is constantly evolving, and enthusiasts want to stay on top of everything.
The league offers NBA League Pass to fans, which gives subscribers access to out-of-market games on one platform.
Is it really worth signing up for NBA League Pass, or is it better to stream via different means?
Packages
The NBA currently offers two different packages for its League Pass service. The cheaper option is around $17 per month, and allows a subscriber to stream on one device with commercials.
The more expensive option, called League Pass Premium, allows users to stream concurrently on three different devices, allows offline viewing and shows in-arena entertainment instead of commercials. This bundle costs nearly $25 per month.
Exceptions
While NBA League Pass markets itself as a service that provides all available games on a given day or night, that is not technically accurate.
For example, any NBA games that are on national television are not accessible through NBA League Pass. Viewers would need to pull up that game on a different app(streaming or otherwise), or through their cable package if the channel is included.
Additionally, any NBA games in your home market are also not accessible through League Pass. For example, if you live in New York, New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets games are not available through the service.
However, the basic and premium packages do include live radio broadcasts for all games.
Considerations
The NBA signed a new media rights deal ahead of the 2025-2026 season, which will allow ESPN/ABC, NBC/Peacock and Amazon Prime to air or stream NBA games for the next 11 seasons. This altered broadcast landscape could significantly affect NBA League Pass and its viability for consumers.
There’s a chance that by February, there could be daily national television/streaming games for the remainder of the season under this new deal. While that’s a good thing in theory, this arrangement could significantly hamper the value of NBA League Pass if the current rules about national TV games remain in place.
It’s going to be interesting to see whether the NBA alters its policy on this in order to drive more subscribers to League Pass in the coming years.
Conclusions
It may be prudent to take a wait and see approach to signing up for NBA League Pass for the 2025-2026 campaign and beyond. If even fewer games are available directly on the platform moving forward, it might be hard to justify its monthly or annual cost.
Additionally, since the vast majority of playoff games are on national television, NBA League Pass is rendered virtually useless during the postseason.
At the end of the day, it might be worth talking to a few family members or friends to see if they want to split the cost of a subscription, which may make the purchase more palatable.
