I guess this is the pendant to „Yank here“ on r/soccer as this question, coming from a European, be probably seems and might very well be very dumb.
During the Olympics I read a lot of Posts and Comments on this Subreddit complaining about the amount of ads showed during NBA games especially compared to the Olympics. More ads obviously means more money but why is the NBA willing to sacrifice the viewing experience for more advertising income?
Contrary to Soccer the are no Leagues competing with the NBA so the NBA is not reliant on offering higher and higher wages by making more Money from ads as they already offer the highes wages by quite a distance.
So why does the NBA show so many ads to pay the players higher salaries when there really isn’t a need to offer higher salaries to keep them in the League?
Additionally a better Viewing experience could help grow the Audience especially abroad and lead to more income for teams in merchandis
The tv networks bid lots of money to buy the rights to show games. The tv deals are a significant source of basketball related revenue which is split between owners and players per the collective bargaining agreement. The tv networks need to sell advertisements during the game that a captive audience will view to earn the revenue to make bidding for the rights worthwhile. The owners and players alike are aligned in maximizing league revenue so they can continue to get richer. The viewers are used to it and so they don’t seem to mind too much.