I genuinely love how most all Sixers interviews are done with business reporters and not sports reporters. The streak continued when Scott O’Neil spoke to the Inquirer’s David Sell about his vision for the future, off the court, which includes streaming games directly to fans without the need for, say, Comcast SportsNet:

Sixers CEO Scott O’Neil said he imagines a day when the Sixers’ on-court success could be live-streamed over the Internet directly to paying fans/customers, while skipping the regional sports network. For now, and through 2029, the Sixers are tied to Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia.

“The basic backbone of sports has been built on media deals,” O’Neil said in a recent interview in his office at the Navy Yard. “If you look at the viewing habits over the last five years and those projected over the next five years, you can make an argument that sports will be the one piece holding the current infrastructure of television and cable together.”

…

“What’s interesting for us is that the local RSN [regional sports network] will come under more pressure than the national (provider), I think,” O’Neil said. “If they do, at some point, something is going to break.”

Scott O’Neil does. not. give. a. shit. Publicly rip into Wells Fargo for not being a team sponsor? Swish. Not-so-subtly explain his vision for partner Draft Kings’ future? Buckets. Tell the Inquirer that broadcast partner CSN is basically dispensable? THROW IT DOWN, BIG MAN!

Prediction: The Sixers, whose games are currently streamed online by CSN*, try to wiggle out of their deal before 2029 and eventually stream their own broadcasts.** Say what you will about the Sixers – all the losing hasn’t stopped the team’s value from rising to an estimated $700 million, up from the $287 million Joshua Harris and Co. paid for it – but they’ve been out ahead of the curve in a lot of areas: Analytics (or, if you’d prefer, tanking), daily fantasy, streaming.

What Scott envisions is pretty much the sort of thing I envisioned for the Phillies in 2012, commenting on a piece by Matt Gelb about their upcoming TV deal. [Gelb shredded Rhea Hughes on Twitter for having me on the radio to talk about his piece, and in an email told me my idea about sports not being on cable was more or less stupid.] We’re still probably some years away from teams broadcasting their own games – online – but I’m not sure I can recall a team exec speaking so candidly about, almost cheerleading for, the demise of regional sports TV. Balls out, Scott. Balls out.

*CSN only got 45,000 streams for the entirety of last season. Sounds like a lot… until you realize that, say, this website gets more page views on a typical weekday. There’s still a huge gap in viewership between TV and online. But then again, the Sixers stink. So that figure would be more massive if this were the Flyers, or even Phillies.

**Alternate theory: O’Neil wants to renegotiate current deal to get a chunk of streaming revenue, which currently rolls up to Comcast.