The NBA has tremendous popularity around the world and Adam Silver will attempt to continue that growth as commissioner.
"The league that David Stern inherited had our Finals on tape delay, so I'm inheriting a league where games and Finals are televised in 215 countries, 50 languages," said Silver in an exclusive interview with Sam Amick. "But beyond that, I'm inheriting a social media community of over a half a billion followers on a global basis. And what's rapidly changing in the world around us right now is the explosive ramping up of cell phone usage by consumers.
"And so I guess I see someone saying, 'Where's the opportunity?' But to me, the U.S. is less than 5% of the world's population. So when I look at markets like the billion people in Africa, the over billion people that live in India, the (1.3 billion) that live in China, just those markets alone where we're just barely scratching the surface, there is so much opportunity out there for us."
Silver will also go after the NFL for supremacy in the United States.
"I'm also very focused on growing the game in the U.S.," said Silver. "I see enormous upside, both in consumption of new media; largely digital media — but just as importantly, for conventional television."
The NFL has considerably larger revenue from television than the NBA.
"I look at the enormous gap between NFL ratings and NBA ratings and see enormous room for growth,"