About

For each team, Countyline compares three scenarios. The first is what the team does today. The second is the league hub with no free games, and the third is the hub with some games kept free on a local station. The map draws a circle for every county in the team's market, sized by the number of households there, and shows whether those households can watch free, would have to pay, or have no way to watch.

Each scenario also gets an estimate of how many households it reaches, what the team would make, and what one household would need to buy to watch every game. Those estimates depend on assumptions, like how many households would sign up for a paid stream, and you can change any of them with the sliders. The link saves whatever you change, so you can send someone the exact view you are looking at.

Every number comes from a public source or from the model, and the methods page says which. Where I could not find a public number, I left it blank and the screen says Blank.

I'm Blake Kahler, and I built Countyline on my own time. I do not work for the NBA, any of its teams or any media company named here, and nobody paid me to make it. I wanted the people making local media decisions to have something they can check for themselves. That is why each team has a county map and a one-page memo, and why the methods page lists every source and assumption behind them.

Countyline is an independent analysis by Blake Kahler. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the National Basketball Association, any NBA team, or any media company named. Names and logos identify the subjects of the analysis. Figures are estimates from public sources, cited on the methods page. This product uses the Census Bureau Data API but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.

Household counts, the householder's age and broadband subscriptions come from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey five-year estimates for each county. Free over-the-air coverage is based on the FCC's service contours for each station. Prices come from each service's own page when it lists one. When it does not, they come from the report named on the source label, as of the date next to it. The size of the hub's rights pool is from Sports Business Journal's reporting, which I read through the outlet named on its label. Schedules come from the league and ESPN. The methods page lists every assumption and every sourced number with its source, its date and a grade for how solid it is.

Team and partner logos are here only to identify who the analysis is about, and they belong to their owners. I do not recolor them or place them next to the Countyline logo. The fonts are Roboto, Roboto Condensed and Antonio, used under the SIL Open Font License.