In the middle of one of the biggest games of the season, Mark Cuban took to Twitter to ask a little side question to NBA fans.
Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, said he had a “personal question” and asked his followers who were watching Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals between the Boston Celtics and Miami Heat: who is watching on a pirated stream?
“Got a personal question for everyone watching heats vs celts right now. Who is watching on a pirated stream. I'm curious how prevalent it is,” Cuban tweeted.
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A few minutes later, Cuban retweeted user Rohit Bhadange (@RoOnBrand) who suggested that Cuban pose the question through a poll.
Bhandange’s poll received nearly 50,000 responses in its first 13 hours, with “not pirated stream” receiving 56.1% of the votes and “pirated stream” receiving 43.9%. The poll is up for 24 hours or until 8:52pm on May 30.
While Cuban framed it as a personal question, the root may have come from a social media post by ESPN (DIS) after Game 6 of the same series just two days prior.
ESPN reposted a video of TikTok user Cory G (@corygarrastazu) where it showed Miami Heat fans celebrating at a social event after watching the game on a cellphone. The fans thought the Heat had won the game and advanced to the NBA Finals despite actually losing after a buzzer-beating tip-in by the Celtics’ Derrick White.
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However, in the social media post, keen-eyed viewers noticed that the people in the post were watching the game using StreamEast, an illegal streaming site.
ESPN posted this video despite being one of the lead broadcasters of NBA games, reportedly paying about $1.4 billion a year to broadcast the league’s games.
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