NEW YORK | The sports complex created by Disney within its Orlando amusement park is preparing to welcome NBA and MLS, a winning operation for the group, which ensures attendance, programming and publicity during a summer weighed down by the coronavirus.
It is on this 103 hectare site, built on former Florida swamps, that the North American basketball league NBA will finish its season, starting July 31 and play more than a hundred matches from here. to October 12.
From July 8 to August 11, the MLS football league will play, in the same place, a tournament while waiting to possibly be able to resume its season, also without spectators, pandemic obliges and with a minimum of people per delegation to limit the risks. spread of the coronavirus.
Launched in 1997, ESPN Wide World of Sports is owned by the Disney Group, broadcaster of the NBA, via ABC and the ESPN cable network, for around US $ 1.4 billion per year.
ESPN also owns some of the rights to MLS, for which it only pays a few tens of millions of dollars a year.
“The link with ESPN helps, that’s clear,” said Victor Matheson, professor of sports economics at Holy Cross University (Massachusetts), one being the broadcaster of the other for nearly 20 years ( 2002).
A sign of this strong relationship, Disney inaugurated, in 2019, the NBA Experience, a sort of small interactive basketball league museum, in the very heart of Disney World, a gigantic park of more than 100 km2, almost the size of San Francisco. .
Promotion for Walt Disney World
But for the academic, that’s not the only reason the resort has won out over Las Vegas, Atlantic City or Nassau, Bahamas.
“They already have sports facilities that allow them to host several tournaments,” he said of the three indoor halls, with 18 courts in total in basketball configuration. And “they have the experience”.
The complex was, in fact, created mainly to host competitions for juniors and Disney has signed a 30-year contract with the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), the main youth sports organization in the United States.
Las Vegas hosts the NBA Summer League on the UNLV University campus every year, but both venues are downtown, while Disney’s WWS is a self-contained city. This simplifies a priori the management of health risks related to COVID-19 and operation in a vacuum.
“You wouldn’t host professional sports there if your goal was to attract audiences,” says Keith Smith, who worked for Disney for nearly 20 years and now covers the NBA as a reporter.
None of the three rooms can accommodate more than 8,000 people. “But for an event like this, without spectators, it’s perfect.”
Beyond that, NBA and MLS will be able to benefit from the hotel facilities of Walt Disney World, now deserted, because the park is closed, in particular two complexes located a few hundred meters away, on the other side of a highway.
And even after the partial reopening of the park to visitors, scheduled for July, there is no risk that tourists and NBA players will cross paths.
“The parks are quite far from the Wide World of Sports,” said Keith Smith, who was the first to publicly suggest the idea of the NBA coming to Orlando. “And then there’s security at every entrance (to the complex). So no one will approach NBA teams if they are not allowed to. “
For Victor Matheson, this organization allows ESPN and the NBA to avoid a major economic shock. The American League loses about 40% of box office revenue, but saves nearly $ 1 billion in TV revenue, according to The Athletic.
On the Disney side, the group will receive compensation from the NBA for the rental of the premises, board and lodging, but the important thing is elsewhere.
“They will be able to broadcast these matches which otherwise would not have been played, and do a lot of promotion for Walt Disney World throughout the NBA’s stay there,” notes Keith Smith.
“So they will gain financially, but also in other forms.”
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