The NBA has been rumored to be signing a massive media rights deal for a while and it officially has been pushed through. Front Office Sports is reporting that this is an 11-year deal and worth $76 billion deal with NBC, ESPN and Amazon. While discussions could still happen where the NBA has a fourth package that includes TNT Sports, it appears like the sport will be saying goodbye to its 40-year partnership.
This is going to be a massive talking point about each package the deal includes but TNT has roughly five days to match one of the offers. Let’s take a deeper dive of what this massive media rights deal means for the future of the NBA.
What does this deal mean for the NBA’s future?
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The NBA is in prime position to significantly see its revenues increase thanks to the incoming media rights deals that begin for the 2025-26 season. That means the salary cap for the league is going to increase significantly as a result and that will be a major boost for player’s salaries going forward.
The collective bargaining agreement (CBA) has new rules in place for team construction but if the salary cap continues to increase, there can be a massive increase in the max contracts that players can receive. We can be on the verge of seeing an $80 million per year salary for players and really help teams create better rosters as they can offer more money.
Fans are going to be asked to be paying for more to watch the league and it will be interesting to see how the NBA League Pass is going to work as a result of this deal. Fans still have one more year of normalcy before these media deals go into place.
With how teams with salary cap space look right now, they are going to be able to offer a lot of money. The health of the National Basketball Association seems to be trending in the right direction and there is the ability to watch games on linear television as well as streaming. The game of basketball continues to grow and this is just another success for the league as a whole.
About the Author
Vincent Pensabene graduated from Saint Leo University in 2019 with a B.A. in Sport Business and has focused on the media side of sports. He writes for multiple publications and is interested in the reasoning of why things happen. Feel free to follow him on social media @TalkVinTalk and discuss all things sports.
