With the NBA Finals matchup set to tip off this Thursday between the Dallas Mavericks and Boston Celtics, basketball fans are eagerly awaiting to find out which team will hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy as champions. Yet on the outside, there is a bevy of speculation pertaining to the future of the National Basketball Association on television. The league is reportedly formalizing new media rights deals with The Walt Disney Company, NBCUniversal and Amazon that would nearly triple its existing fee, according to Tom Friend of Sports Business Journal. As a result, Warner Bros. Discovery would cease broadcasting NBA games, ending a relationship within the company that dates back to the 1984-85 season when games were broadcast on TBS.
These negotiations have been a frequent topic of discussion on The Sporting Class from Meadowlark Media, which began its latest episode reacting to TNT Sports analyst Charles Barkley speaking out against those at his company. Barkley has expressed his disdain for the process on numerous occasions, excoriating his bosses and demonstrating palpable frustration. Many fans are concerned about the future of Inside the NBA, which features the aforementioned Barkley with colleagues Ernie Johnson, Kenny “The Jet” Smith and Shaquille O’Neal.
In the end though, David Samson, former president of the Miami Marlins, believes that the marketplace has reached a point where it is ready to realize that the NBA on NBC is returning and Inside the NBA could need a new home. John Skipper, co-founder and chief executive officer of Meadowlark Media and former president of ESPN, concurred with Samson’s assertion and predicted things will conclude as they are being reported. The ambiguity surrounding Warner Bros. Discovery’s matching rights clause has been something Skipper has discussed multiple times on the show, including whether or not it could be executed in actuality.
“I don’t have any personal knowledge of what’s in their deal, other than I have no recollection of it being in the ESPN deal, and I have never been aware in any circumstance with any rights contract of such a thing as a, ‘Gee, if you create a new package, we get the right to match that as well,’” Skipper said.
“I’m not accusing anybody of mendacity, but I think what’s going on is more of an exercise in spinning the fact that they’re not going to get it, and it allows them to say, ‘Gee, we love the NBA. I never meant it when I said we didn’t have to have it, but we don’t have to have it for this price.’”
Samson feels as if Warner Bros. Discovery president and chief executive officer David Zaslav had and received board approval for a plan with the NBA media rights negotiations and is executing it at this time. An aspect of it that intrigues him is why the company has publicized its right to match in the contract. Samson postulated that if that part was unknown, Zaslav would be able to say that the league wanted to do deals with NBCUniversal and Amazon and that there was nothing his company could do. Even so, it is being posited whether or not Warner Bros. Discovery can genuinely match either offer because of its implementation of broadcast television and exclusive streaming rights, respectively.
“Well that’s why in some ways this discussion if there’s a right to match or not is moot,” Samson said. “If I believe – if they have a right to match, it requires them to match all material terms and conditions, and I think the NBA could cite that they are on a broadcast network; they could cite that their games on Amazon are all only [on a] streaming platform.”
In reality, Skipper thinks that there was a miscalculation by Warner Bros. Discovery that it would be able to retain NBA rights for less money than what is being offered on the open market. NBC is reportedly prepared to pay between $2.5 billion and $2.6 billion for a rights package annually, while the Amazon deal is reportedly worth between $1.8 billion and $2 billion annually.
Warner Bros. Discovery currently pays the league a reported $1.2 billion per year for NBA games, a deal that began with the 2016-17 season. Even though the incumbent rightsholders – The Walt Disney Company and Warner Bros. Discovery – had an exclusive 90-day negotiating window with the league, Samson presumes that there was knowledge of potential outside partners beforehand.
“Adam Silver does not let himself become that exposed,” Samson said. “He doesn’t let the window close unless he knows that he has another dancing partner. It would be irresponsible for him to do that.”
Samson does not believe the commentary made by Zaslav affected Barkley, although he stated earlier in the episode that he thought it could have represented the end of his time with the network. Additionally, Samson argued that Barkley is not the person ultimately signing Zaslav’s paychecks, nor does he negotiate his options or any compensation granted to him.
“All things being equal, I suspect he would prefer not to be the object of Charles’ comments, and I don’t know if he had to be,” Skipper said of Zaslav. “If you’re a shareholder, this is why you’re saying he’s brilliant is because if you were a shareholder, you would be glad they walked away from this very expensive package.”
“I just know very well that as a shareholder, my stock’s been crap,” Samson said, “and it’s nice to have the NBA; it’s nice to have a popular show, but I want my stock to go up.”
