In less than two weeks, the official era of the new 11-year broadcasting deal will kick off. There is an excitement after all the NBA received a total of $75 billion from Disney (ABC/ESPN), Amazon, and NBC. Starting 2025-26, fans will see nationally televised NBA games every day of the week. Everything is good so far, right? But the fans are already complaining. And no, it’s about the hiked prices, but because of their poor viewing experience.

There is still time for the official season to kick off, but the complaints aren’t stopping. First, let’s understand that to watch all the games with respect to different partners, one will have to nearly shell out $120/month. Even after paying, the fans seem to have concerns over the updated score bugs for the new season. The job of the score bug is to display accurate information about the game, which is visible to the fans. Thematically and spacing are where the current MSG score bug lacks, and it’s pretty clear in this scenario.

“New MSG score bug looks like an illegal stream.” Every year, some broadcasters in different sports change their scorebug. All with a hope that something sticks with the fans. But the recent change in the world is not well-liked. Just last season, the Bulls changed their bug in the next game, once they saw the complaints of their stakeholders. Now, will this happen even this season? Only time will tell. Let’s talk about the issue with the Knicks Score bug.

Back in the MSG after their two preseason games in Abu Dhabi, the team lacked no energy. Hustle plays led them to a decent 100-95 win over the Timberwolves. And the new MSG Scorebug was also on display on the bottom left of the screen. It’s essentially two rectangles divided into six parts. The top left is the regular game clock, and the bottom left shows the quarter and shot clock with an even smaller font. That’s why one netizen even complained about seeing it as 1.4 seconds instead of 14 seconds.

The middle blocks at the top and bottom are for the team logos and team abbreviation (MIN and NY, for example, of the current situation). The far right top and bottom show the current score of the respective teams. But all of this lacks the feel of the previous ones, as everything is very limited. Even the color in the box, under the names, was two different shades of blue. Again, the sentiment of the fans was clear that it lacked character.

Fans question the strategy of MSG Score Bug after the record-breaking broadcasting deal

Last season’s finals had 10.2 million viewers per game, but were the least-watched finals since 2007. So, it’s clear that there is enough pressure on Adam Silver to bring in the new viewers. Or to make sure the current ones don’t drop out. The preseason is the right time to test, but the fans are not happy with the experiment. “Anything is better than the complete joke of a scorebug ESPN has been using for three seasons now and counting. They don‘t even need to create a new one, just choose any from 2004-2022 at random and it‘ll be better than the current one.”

So much hate and negativity towards the presentation, as fans are ready to boycott games with a strict ultimatum to the NBA commissioner. “This better not be the MSG score bug for the regular season. That shot clock is just as disgraceful as the Knicks’ shooting so far tonight”. Comparing the shocking presentation to the shocking shooting from the Knicks might have been the right approach. After all, the Mike Brown team had only 34% from the FG, converting just 35 from the 102 shots.

In one of the Bulls‘ games this season, the complaint was again visible. “This is the worst scorebug addition of all time, and it’s not close. I do not need to know “The Diff”.” It was a flat score bug with the team logos, but the issue stems from an additional box, which was over the Cavs in this instance, which read ‘ The Diff:2’ as they were 2 points behind. Another issue was that there were no team abbreviations, just logos, which did not even feature as a full logo.

All fans want the billion-dollar networks to add something a little more visible and vibrant scorecards to their screens. Will Adam Silver listen to this is another story, as the commissioner already called it a “highlights” sport, which did not go down well with the long-time viewers.