The National Basketball Association is on the cusp of starting its 78th season in just over a month, and there are plenty of storylines to follow within the league. Los Angeles Lakers star forward LeBron James suits up for his 21st year; Kevin Durant plays his first full season with the Phoenix Suns; and the Denver Nuggets trying to repeat for an NBA championship represent some of the many talking points that will be proffered on television over the ensuing six months. Combined with the new In-Season Tournament, rules for resting star players and burgeoning international reach, the Association is flourishing ahead of negotiations for a new national television media rights contract.
The current deal the entity and its partners are operating under provides the NBA $2.6 billion annually, a figure that the Association is reportedly looking to double or possibly triple. There are plenty of interested suitors, which are likely to include existing rights holders The Walt Disney Company (ESPN/ESPN+/ABC) and Warner Bros. Discovery (TNT/NBA TV/Max) starting when the exclusive 45-day negotiating window opens on March 9, 2024.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has stated that the media landscape looks considerably different than the last team the league negotiated a deal, which could imply that digital and/or streaming components will be part of the new pact. Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV+ could serve as future homes of games, similar to what the entities are doing with the National Football League and Major League Baseball, respectively.
NBC Sports lost the rights to the NBA in 2002, but it is reportedly interested in making a run to bring the league back to its platforms. During a recent appearance at the IMG Summit, NBCUniversal Media Group Chairman Mark Lazarus emphasized the nature of the appealing property.
“Both NBC and me personally have long histories with [the] NBA from my Turner years,” Lazarus said. “It’s a wonderful product in the States and globally. It’s a really valuable product [that is] culturally relevant in ways maybe some other sports aren’t, [and] it speaks to multiple generations, so we’re intrigued by that. But we’re not an incumbent, and the process will come and go as it does.”
NBC Sports currently holds media rights for Sunday Night Football, prime time television’s No. 1 program for 12 consecutive years, and pays the NFL a reported $2 billion each year for these rights. The network will also serve as the home of the Super Bowl to decide the champions of the 2025, 2029 and 2033 regular seasons under the new 11-year national media rights deal.
Moreover, the network is in discussions to renew its NASCAR deal and existing partnership with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), the latter of which expires next October. WWE officially merged with Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and is operating as a joint venture under the publicly-traded domain “TKO Group Holdings.” NBC also began carrying Big Ten Conference games, reportedly for $350 million per year, to carry between 14 and 16 football games every season through 2029.
“Our priorities are to do the deals with those we’re incumbents in,” Lazarus articulated. “That said, we have long-term deals with the NFL, Big Ten, the Olympics and the Premier League. We’ve made a lot of investment and will continue to invest in sports.”
Comcast Corporation’s year-to-year (YoY) media revenue increased 0.1% to $6.195 billion as divulged in its latest quarterly earnings report. With the cessation of late night talk shows, sketch comedy and other scripted programming because of strikes in Hollywood, the impact of live sports in the modern media ecosystem is being spotlighted. Lazarus, who oversees various segments of the business outside of solely sports, is focused on aggregate growth across the board.
“Putting Big Ten on every Saturday night in prime time was a way for us to invest differently in content and not as much in necessarily scripted entertaining programming, but live sports and live events,” Lazarus said. “Live continues to be critical, whether it’s sports or entertainment events that are live, and then we are a big news company. So live continues to be valuable, whether it’s through media or in-venue.”
