Five NBA teams are continuing to face an expiration of their current regional sports network broadcast rights agreements with FanDuel Sports Network following the conclusion of the current NBA season. Following a soft deadline of April 1 to renew their agreements, the Sports Business Journal is reporting that all five teams have now delayed their soft deadline to work out an extension for an undisclosed period.
According to the publication, the Atlanta Hawks, Cleveland Cavaliers, Miami Heat, Minnesota Timberwolves, and Milwaukee Bucks have yet to renew their agreements with the RSN to at least broadcast games for next season at the minimum. Meanwhile, as the teams weigh what they’d prefer to do locally with an RSN, the league is currently negotiating a potential national streaming RSN with Amazon, YouTube, Apple, among others.
This is not the first time this soft deadline has been pushed back, according to SBJ. Previously, the deadline was in December of last year, before shifting to April 1, and now it appears to be sometime during the summer.
In the meantime, while the NBA continues to work on a potential national streaming option, the teams will have other alternatives they could investigate beginning next season. For example, they could all return to FanDuel Sports Network and work on their own RSN agreements, or alternatively, choose to adopt a more linear, over-the-air model like what the Utah Jazz, Phoenix Suns, and several other teams have done in recent years.
Furthermore, Sports Business Journal reports that sources have said the NBA is informing team executives that the streaming RSN deal for the league is not imminent and to stay patient with the ongoing negotiations. As a result, this could lead to a situation where each of the five teams may enter the summer with no distribution agreement at all, ultimately forcing their hand with a local agreement before the season begins.
Finally, the report stated that it is more than likely—according to their sources—that four of the five teams (Bucks, Heat, Hawks, Timberwolves) will likely extend their agreements with FanDuel Sports Network. The only question mark remains the Cavaliers, due to Dan Gilbert’s launch of Rock Entertainment Sports Network. The over-the-air network could potentially house broadcasts of the Cavaliers, but nothing has been confirmed for next season.
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