According to a press release put out by media conglomerate Warner Bros. Discovery, the NBA will now have to choose between two contract offers for television broadcasting rights for the next decade. The National Basketball Association already has rights deals in place with Disney, NBCUniversal, and Amazon.
On Monday, WBD provided information to the league indicating a willingness to match the Amazon 1.8B per year bid to retain its most popular form of programming. Now the question becomes: did Warner Bros. Discovery wait too late in the process to submit this information to the Adam Silver-led organization to decide to retain their broadcasting services?
Broadcasting Rights Choice Decision Up To NBA
https://gty.im/463451950
Despite a long and successful partnership between WBD and the National Basketball Association, the fact that negotiations have reached this stage speaks volumes in the media broadcasting world. Just last week in Las Vegas, the NBA’s Board of Governors approved an 11-year, $76 billion rights fee package.
The decision opened a five-day window for the multinational media company to provide notification on whether or not they were willing to match a bid package to secure professional basketball on the media network. In 2022, WBD CEO David Zaslav claimed that the entertainment conglomerate “don’t have to have the NBA.” Following Monday’s announcement to match Amazon’s offer, that very much seems like a negotiating ploy in retrospect.
According to the Washington Post, the NBA now has the option to accept or deny WBD’s request.
The NBA will review Turner’s match and can either contest it or accept it, meaning Turner would simply take over Amazon’s deal. If the league contests it, Warner would have the choice to sue the league.
Typically seen in front-loaded sports contract negotiations, such as Joe Sakic’s $15 million signing bonus from the New York Rangers, Amazon was expected to pay a significant amount upfront to the NBA in an escrow account that many in the industry saw as being potentially difficult to match given recent reported financial struggles since the company merger.
Primary NBA Broadcasting Rights Land on ESPN/ABC
The main broadcasting rights will be shifted from WBD (and TNT Sports) over to Disney’s ESPN/ABC network under a $2.6 billion agreement. ESPN is expected to reduce the overall number of regular season contests from 100 down to about 80 national telecasts. Under the current agreement, NBC and Amazon would alternate conference finals, while ESPN would have broadcasting rights to the other conference finals and the NBA Finals for the next decade. If the NBA chooses to accept WBD’s contractual right to match, TNT Sports would take over portions of the contract assigned to Amazon, including the broadcasting rights to the In-Season Tournament. The ratified agreement is scheduled to begin with the 2025–26 season.
There will be more to come as this story develops.
For More Great Content
Check out all the great content Total Apex Sports has to offer. Check us out on X @TotalApexSports and our other sites: Total Apex Sports Bets and Total Apex Fantasy Sports.
