NBA commissioner makes hollow vow to end Nuggets TV stalemate

Nuggets games are broadcast on Altitude Sports, a regional sports network owned by Stan Kroenke. Since 2004, it has broadcast games of the Nuggets, the Avalanche, and the Rapids of Major League Soccer - all owned by the Kroenke family.

But in 2019, Altitude's contracts with different television providers expired. Altitude reached a deal with DirecTV, but Dish Network and Comcast, the cable provider with a 92 percent market share in Denver, dropped the network. That means that for four years, fans in Denver haven't been able to watch the Avalanche, last year's Stanley Cup champions, or the Nuggets during their run to their first NBA Finals.

Altitude filed an antitrust lawsuit against Comcast in 2019, which the parties settled in March, without any progress toward resolving the Nuggets/Avalanche standoff. Local fans can only watch the two-time MVP Nikola Jokic by using DirecTV, a streaming service called Fubo TV. Even NBA League Pass subscribers in Denver can't watch their own team.

Silver told reporters before Game 1 that he was sympathetic to Nuggets fans' frustrations. 

"The league office has tried to mediate several times between the parties,” Silver said. “It’s a commercial dispute, and there hasn’t been a simple resolution to it. There’s no doubt it’s bad for the fans, of course."

While Silver said "It's on us to fix it," Denver fans might be skeptical. In 2020, during Silver's annual state of the league address, the commissioner said, "Coming out of All-Star, (the NBA) will be redoubling their efforts to try to find a path forward here." In three years, that "redoubling" hasn't led to any progress in the stalemate between a billionaire owner and a $162B corporation.

Fans in Denver are stuck with bad choices. They can switch to DirecTV to watch the Nuggets and Avalanche, but then they can't watch the University of Colorado, because only Comcast has the Pac-12 Network. And since Comcast also provides internet, switching services can be costly and difficult. 

Nuggets fan Alec Gwin summed up the situation to The Athletic in late 2019.

"It’s a billionaire pissing contest," Gwin said. "And we’re standing underneath it."

Despite Silver's words of concern, after four years of this impasse, Denver fans have stopped expecting the commissioner to provide an umbrella.