Scottie Pippen is auctioning off gear from his legendary NBA career with the Bulls
Summary
- Scottie Pippen is auctioning a significant portion of his personal memorabilia (including Dream Team items and Michael Jordan's shoes) via Sotheby's, noting that the sports memorabilia market is at an "all-time high."
- Pippen attributes the decline in NBA viewership (down roughly 50% from the 1998 peak) to the "distraction economy." He argues that smartphones and apps have fragmented attention spans, making it difficult for modern audiences to commit to watching full live games.
- While acknowledging the game has become global, Pippen suggests the domestic product suffers because the style of play has changed and the audience is no longer captive due to mobile technology.
Trade Ideas
Pippen states, "Memorabilia is an all time high right now," and notes that high-end auction houses like Sotheby's (normally known for fine art) are now aggressively targeting sports gear. Sotheby's is a private company. eBay is the primary publicly traded marketplace for sports trading cards, collectibles, and memorabilia. If the asset class is experiencing a secular boom and high valuations, eBay's Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) in the collectibles category should benefit from increased transaction velocity and pricing. LONG eBay as a proxy for the booming collectibles market. The collectibles market can be a bubble; if the economy slows, discretionary spending on memorabilia often dries up quickly.
The interviewer notes NBA Finals viewership is "less than half" of the 1998 peak. Pippen confirms it is "hard for people to engage in the game as they did in the nineties." Disney (ESPN) and Comcast (NBCUniversal) recently committed billions to NBA rights deals. If the underlying product (live games) is structurally losing viewership to short-form mobile content, the Return on Investment (ROI) for these massive media rights packages may degrade. The "stickiness" of the live sports bundle is being challenged. WATCH these broadcasters for signs that ad revenue cannot cover the escalating costs of sports rights. Live sports remain the last bastion of linear TV; viewership could rebound or shift successfully to their streaming platforms (Disney+ / Peacock).
When asked about declining NBA ratings, Pippen explains, "People are now engaged in their phone and it takes away from... basketball... people don't really have to watch games anymore." This is the "Attention Economy" zero-sum game. The time users spend not watching live sports is being reallocated to mobile apps. Meta (Instagram/Facebook) and Alphabet (YouTube/Shorts) are the primary aggregators of this fragmented attention. Pippen identifies the smartphone as the direct competitor to the television broadcast. LONG the "Distractors" (Big Tech/Social) that are stealing market share from linear entertainment. Regulatory crackdowns on screen time or social media algorithms; saturation of the digital ad market.
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This Bloomberg Markets video, published March 08, 2026, features Scottie Pippen discussing EBAY, DIS, CMCSA, META, GOOGL. 3 trade ideas extracted by AI with direction and confidence scoring.
Speakers: Scottie Pippen · Tickers: EBAY, DIS, CMCSA, META, GOOGL