Super League Basketball (SLB), the newly established top-tier of UK basketball, has announced its first global broadcast deal, with major sports OTT service DAZN.
The exclusive deal sees DAZN become the exclusive broadcast rightsholder for the league’s men’s competition worldwide, including domestically in the UK, and it will cover games free-to-air in all territories as part of its “freemium” content offering.
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The previous top-flight of UK basketball, the British Basketball League, had been shown on pay-TV giant Sky Sports for a number of years courtesy of a succession of one-year broadcast contracts that naturally has not been renewed for 2024-25.
Sky covered 40 games from the competition’s 2023-24 season, but the new DAZN deal will now see every game covered through the 2024-25 campaign.
DAZN will also craft a SLB-centric content area on its site that will host game broadcasts for every single game across the season live as well as on-demand, and will host shoulder content and ancillary programming from around the league.
The inaugural SLB season will begin on September 27.
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By GlobalDataSpeaking on the announcement, DAZN Group chief executive Shay Segev stated: “We want to use our reach and industry-leading technology to bring these competitions to existing and new audiences, fostering a truly fan-centric global community.
“Super League Basketball is at a turning point in its history and is a property with exceptional potential for commercial growth – we are delighted to add it to our growing international portfolio of basketball and to join them in building an exciting future.”
Segev added: “DAZN is rapidly becoming the global Home of Basketball and SLB will form an important part of this.”
Alongside SLB, DAZN also has a wide-ranging broadcast rights deal with international basketball governing body FIBA, and its Courtside 1891 streaming service, to showcase matches from a range of its international competitions such as the FIBA World Cup and Continental Cup.
DAZN also holds rights for the Basketball Champions League of Europe, the EuroLeague Women continental competition, and the top divisions of Italy, France, Australia, Japan, and more in varying international and domestic markets.
Having only recently been established, SLB has rushed to attract commercial partners ahead of the league’s tip-off-date.
This includes sportswear brand Reebok, which has now agreed a multi-year partnership to serve as the competition’s kit and basketball sneaker supplier.
