{"id":260736,"date":"2025-10-30T12:18:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T12:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/260736\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T12:18:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T12:18:14","slug":"the-nba-is-extending-its-relationship-with-one-of-the-sporting-worlds-most-intriguing-start-up-companies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/260736\/","title":{"rendered":"The NBA is extending its relationship with one of the sporting world\u2019s most intriguing start-up companies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n One of the sports world\u2019s most intriguing start-up companies is renewing its long-term partnership with its first-ever major professional sports league<\/a> partner.\n <\/p>\n

\n The NBA<\/a> and Cosm, the entertainment company that\u2019s reinventing the sports bar with what they like to call \u201cshared reality,\u201d announced Thursday an extended partnership to air live NBA games in Cosm\u2019s domes. The IMAX-esque experience allows Cosm\u2019s customers to watch live sporting events on its unique 87-foot-diameter, 12L+ LED screens that have gone viral for offering a first-of-its-kind experience for fans.\n <\/p>\n

\n The NBA was Cosm\u2019s first-ever league partner long before the company opened its first location in Los Angeles in 2024. The two entities are now set to work together into 2030 and beyond.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cOur ambition is to give another option for fans that might be out of the marketplace or their favorite team is on the road, or they haven\u2019t been able to get to those courtside seats or lower bowl seats,\u201d said Jeb Terry, Cosm\u2019s president and CEO, in an interview with CNN Sports<\/a>. \u201cSo, it\u2019s really complementary, I would say, to the NBA\u2019s ambition of opening up access, giving fans more ways to celebrate the game, and providing other opportunities to lean into that action.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cAnd that\u2019s why it was really an obvious opportunity from the beginning. Because not only is that the innovative spirit of the league, the tech-forward approach, but the same way we approach it by leveraging technology to augment that fan experience and give more optionality, so fans can just lean in and celebrate wherever they are, whether they\u2019re in-market, out-of-market, wherever that may be.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n The extended partnership will allow Cosm to produce and distribute live NBA games at Cosm\u2019s venues for at least the next five years. That means Cosm will be able to send its in-house production team, which is responsible for the unique views provided to viewers at their domes, to key national TV games, events from next year\u2019s All-Star Weekend<\/a>, the playoffs<\/a> and NBA Finals<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

\n Teddy Kaplan, NBA vice president and head of new media partnerships at the league, said working with Cosm has been a no-brainer for his team from the start.\n <\/p>\n

\n Kaplan was on a ski trip to Park City, Utah, in 2022 when he got the opportunity to visit Cosm\u2019s headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah. He diverted from that vacation for a bit to see what the company was working on and was introduced to Cosm\u2019s experience center for the first time, which gave him an idea of what the finished domes would be like.\n <\/p>\n

\n He left that meeting wowed.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI got there and I said, \u2018Oh my God, this is, this is the future. This is what we need,\u2019\u201d Kaplan told CNN Sports.\n <\/p>\n

\n He added, \u201cOur fans are young, tech-savvy, diverse, and they push us to be innovative. And as you\u2019ll see, across our portfolio of distribution points, we\u2019re always looking for ways to innovate the way fans watch our game, whether it\u2019s alt streams, whether it\u2019s via virtual reality, whether it\u2019s with our social partners. Cosm is the perfect piece in our broader network here.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n The initial partnership with the NBA, agreed to in February 2023, was an important inflection point in the company\u2019s history, according to Terry.\n <\/p>\n

\n That kind of high-profile partner gave Cosm \u2013 at that point about a year-and-a-half from opening its first location near SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California \u2013 much needed legitimacy as it entered into discussions with other leagues and broadcast companies that hold the rights to sporting events aired in the US.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWhen you\u2019re building companies, there\u2019s always these pivotal moments along the way. You get the technology sorted. You\u2019re like, \u2018OK, it works.\u2019 Then you have to work on getting market adoption, and there\u2019s a lot of ways to do that with our business,\u201d Terry said.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cPartnerships are paramount. They are critical to how we bring this to life with our fans. And so, having the NBA as our first, it was a great moment for our company to announce it \u2026 and then get that word of mouth trending within the industry and then pushing that forward. And so, you look to have all these credible moments along the way in this growth phase. And this was one of the big ones.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n The next move for Cosm is scaling up into more locations. It currently has domes open at that initial location in Inglewood and one in Dallas. Three more locations have been announced in Detroit, Cleveland and Atlanta.\n <\/p>\n

\n That puts the company in five NBA cities and looking to expand to more, including overseas locations that could put international fans closer to professional American basketball in a way that\u2019s much cheaper and easier than flying across an ocean to get into an NBA arena.\n <\/p>\n

\n Given that Cosm is able to show its customers views that they would have to pay dearly to afford \u2013 the courtside view from the scorer\u2019s table, underneath the hoops in the front row at either end of the floor \u2013 all from the comfort of a sports bar environment, Kaplan said the hope is that NBA fans will be able to approximate that experience from the domes.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe like to use the stat that 99% of our fans will never make it to an NBA game, and that\u2019s in the US. When you go global, it\u2019s 99.99%. And when you think about sitting courtside, basically 100%, right?\u201d Kaplan said.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cAnd so having Cosm as a tool to bring fans closer to the game and speak to those tech-savvy fans is really perfect for us.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the sports world\u2019s most intriguing start-up companies is renewing its long-term partnership with its first-ever major…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260737,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-260736","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-nba","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}