With the NBA declining the exercise of Warner Bros. Discovery’s matching rights provision in its current NBA contract, the league officially announced new media rights deals with The Walt Disney Company (ESPN/ABC), NBCUniversal (NBC/Peacock) and Amazon’s Prime Video. The 11-year deal, reportedly worth a collective $77 billion, results in the league nearly tripling its current media rights fee and bringing games to broadcast and linear television while also including multiple digital and streaming components. Charles Barkley, the award-winning commentator for TNT Sports’ Inside the NBA, has been candid over the last several months about his sentiments towards how the company handled its negotiations with the NBA and his contract with the show.
Entities owned by Warner Bros. Discovery have broadcast NBA games for approximately four decades, starting with the NBA on TBS property in the 1984-85 season. Barkley, who announced that he would be retiring from television after next season no matter what, is currently signed to a 10-year, $210 million deal with TNT Sports. In a statement released after the media rights deal was agreed upon, he expressed melancholy towards the league for “owners and commissioners [choosing] money over the fans.” During a recent appearance on Podcast P with Paul George, Barkley elaborated on his thoughts.
“We work one day a week during the regular season, but doing the playoffs, we work like every night for like two straight months,” Barkley said. “So, if you’re seeing the same people for two straight months for 24 years, you know them, you know their kids, you know their husbands, you know their wives, so that’s what I feel really shi**y about.”
When the show was on the road traveling to cover the NBA Playoffs, Barkley divulged that he took colleagues out to try and lighten the mood. The company losing the NBA, he explained, was among “the worst-kept secrets in the history of civilization,” and it was depressing for him because of his perception that the company was going to lose the broadcast rights. TNT Sports is currently scheduled to present its final season of NBA live game broadcasts starting this fall.
“…I was taking everybody out trying to keep their spirits up, and they were like, ‘Man, I’m married. I got a wife, I got kids, I got a mortgage and I ain’t got no f***ng job,’ and it really hurt me,” Barkley said. “It really hurt me that people who are my friends were talking like that, and I was like, ‘Man, I ain’t never been in that situation in my life where I was going to lose my job and I had a family to take care of,’ and it was really heartbreaking.”
Despite the lawsuit filed against the NBA, to which it has until this Friday to file answering papers, Barkley believes that the league will assert that it is too late. Moreover, he stated his feelings that the matching rights agreement only applies to the packages awarded to ESPN and NBC and that the management at TNT Sports ultimately decided to match the Amazon package since it was the cheapest one. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver formerly practiced law, and Barkley believes that he is too astute to open himself up to legal trouble. Barkley conveyed his incredulity towards how Warner Bros. Discovery took part in the negotiations and referred to the upcoming year as something that will be “bittersweet.”
“First of all, I’m not even sure why we sued,” Barkley said. “Hey, they want to break up with us.”
The acclaimed Inside the NBA studio program featuring Barkley, Ernie Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal and Kenny “The Jet” Smith has been on the air since 1989, and over that time, it has become lauded and cherished by viewers. Before the NBA declined the matching rights, the hashtag #KeepNBAonTNT circulated around social media through which Warner Bros. Discovery and TNT Sports channels shared memories from the broadcasts over the years. When asked if anyone would be able to replicate the success of the program, he expressed that he is not sure if networks ever give these kinds of shows an opportunity to thrive.
“ESPN, which I love, they never give anybody a chance to get any chemistry,” Barkley said. “They’re all just kind of throwing stuff at the wall [of] like, ‘Let’s put this group together,’ and they’ll do that for six months to a year, and then they’re like, ‘It didn’t work.’ Well, you didn’t give it a chance to work.”
