According to a report from Richard Deitsch of The Athletic, Amazon Prime Video will hire Taylor Rooks as lead host for its NBA pregame, halftime and postgame shows which will begin next season. Rooks, who is a current sideline reporter for TNT’s NBA coverage, is already working for Prime Video, doing features during coverage of Thursday Night Football.
Ian Eagle is expected to be the lead play-by-play announcer. Eagle is currently the local voice of the Brooklyn Nets and calls NBA games for TNT Sports. He also announces the NFL and NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament for CBS Sports, in addition to working NFL radio broadcasts for Westwood One.
Recently, a report has come out linking former Dallas Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki to Amazon as a place where he would start his career as a basketball analyst. In the report from Deitsch, he also names Kevin Harlan as someone he believes Amazon will pursue as a play-by-play announcer.
Amazon is the brand-new member of the NBA media family along with ESPN and NBC. The streaming network will air 60 games per season as part of its contract. Prime Video will have Thursday night NBA broadcasts which will start at the conclusion of the NFL season, as well as Friday night games throughout the season.
Amazon will reportedly pay $1.93 billion per year for the media rights deal, which also includes global distribution rights for the NBA. There will be an expanded package of games in select territories, some of which include Mexico, Brazil, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom and Ireland. Rights in Canada within the international games package will begin in the 2026-27 season. Within this package, there are a minimum of 20 additional prime time regular season games each year, along with a Conference Finals series each year and the NBA Finals for six of the 11 years.
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