The basketball world is currently preparing for the NBA Finals matchup between the Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks to determine which team will hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy as league champions. At the same time though, there has been palpable discussion pertaining to the future of the National Basketball Association on television with the league’s television media rights deal set to expire at the conclusion of the 2024-25 season.
The league is now reportedly closing in on deals with The Walt Disney Company (ESPN/ABC), NBCUniversal and Amazon collectively worth $76 billion over 11 years, nearly tripling the league’s existing yearly media rights revenue. Joe Flint, Amol Sharma and Isabella Simonetti of The Wall Street Journal reported this development within the negotiations and outlined more details about the deals with each company.
The Walt Disney Company is the only incumbent among the three rightsholders the league is reportedly setting to have broadcast games for the 2025-26 season and beyond. The company would reportedly retain its NBA package, albeit with fewer games, while continuing to air the NBA Finals for a price point that averages payments of $2.6 billion a year. The deal would also reportedly allow the company to air games on its forthcoming direct-to-consumer service, currently known as ESPN Flagship, set to launch next year.
The report states that NBCUniversal is nearing a deal with the league to pay $2.5 billion per year to show around 100 games per season, half of which would exclusively air on Peacock. NBA games would then air on NBC on Tuesday and Sundays when there is not a conflict with Sunday Night Football games. NBC tried to obtain broadcast rights for the NBA Finals, which it previously broadcast for 11 years, but was unable to secure the series as part of its contract.
The company would then likely raise its subscription price for Peacock upon acquiring the league, The Wall Street Journal reports, attributing the information to a person familiar with the planning. Moreover, executives within NBC entertainment are reportedly preparing for “significant budget cuts” since the NBA would take more prime-time television windows.
Amazon would reportedly pay $1.8 billion yearly for regular season and playoff contests, along with the NBA In-Season Tournament and Play-In Tournament throughout the year. The streaming provider would also reportedly be within the rotation of the conference finals, which would be split among the media partners throughout the deal. In addition, the deal would include the rights to WNBA broadcasts; however, it remains unknown which networks would televise those games as the league burgeons in popularity.
With the report of these three media companies broadcasting NBA games, the incumbent Warner Bros. Discovery would be ostensibly shut out, thus ending a live broadcast relationship with the league that dates back to TBS for the 1984-85 campaign. Warner Bros. Discovery reportedly has the right to match, although the specifics surrounding such an ability are ambiguous. John Ourand of Puck News has reported that there is an outside chance the league could create a fourth media rights package for the company, which expressed that it looked forward to reaching a deal that made sense for all parties at its annual Upfront event last month.
Warner Bros. Discovery was unable to renew its package during a 90-day negotiating window that ended in late-April, during which both incumbent rightsholders reportedly gave the league permission to create a streaming package with Amazon. The report states that Warner Bros. Discovery was granted a chance to commit around $2.2 billion per year for a deal with the league but walked away because of disdain for “the price relative to the value of the package.” The company believes that the NBA has allocated much of its valuable content from its package to Amazon, which reportedly had the outlines of a deal in place upon the expiration of the exclusive negotiating window.
Within the report, Warner Bros. Discovery is said to be planning how to utilize money to bid on other sports rights should it lose the NBA. The company would also be interested in acquiring CBS from Paramount Global to gain exclusive rights for the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament, along with becoming a partner with the National Football League. Paramount Global and Skydance Media have reportedly agreed to a merger deal pending final signoff from National Amusements president and chairman of the Paramount Global board of directors Shari Redstone. It remains unknown if potential new ownership would look to divest CBS or other properties within the portfolio upon an acquisition.
