Another day, another possibility as it relates to the ongoing saga of the NBA media rights negotiations for after next season. As the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday, the NBA appears to be 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. A report today from Michel McCarthy of Front Office Sports suggests there could be an additional fourth package being created for Warner Bros. Discovery to remain an NBA partner that would include regular season and post-season games on TNT.
As McCarthy suggests, there could be several reasons a smaller package might make the most sense for WBD/TNT. This would allow the league and the network to continue their longstanding partnership, would allow for WBD to be more fiscally responsible given their financial situation and could be what saves Inside the NBA. Additionally, the current partnership has TNT running NBA TV and NBA.com which McCarthy says could be an expensive and messy situation which now could be avoided.
The main question that remains is what the package would look like and where the games would come from. One possibility could see the league taking local games away from teams to make the TNT package of games.
Should the NBA make a fourth package work for WBD/TNT it could also avoid a legal battle over the matching rights clause. The NBA would need to formally sign agreements with ESPN, NBC and Prime Video in order to trigger the matching rights agreement, which would reportedly give WBD five days to match an offer.
