Media and entertainment heavyweight Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) intends to match retail giant Amazon’s bid for a package of domestic rights to North American basketball’s NBA.
Amazon has agreed an 11-year streaming deal with the league worth $1.8 billion annually.
That deal is set to include regular-season and playoff games and a share of the conference finals, which will reportedly be rotated between the NBA’s media partners.
However, incumbent partner WBD is planning to exercise its matching rights clause at the last minute.
WBD had looked set to lose NBA rights after its exclusive negotiating window with the league ended in April with no agreement, allowing the league to agree deals with three partners for the next cycle – incumbent Disney/ESPN, NBC, and Amazon.
The 11-year deals with the trio, worth around $76 billion, were ratified this week by the NBA Board of Governors and are due to start from the 2025-26 season.
While not publicly naming those companies, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a press conference yesterday that the league has approved “this stage of those media proposals.”
Regarding WBD’s matching rights clause, he added: “But as you know there are other rights that need to be worked through with existing partners.
“I will say in advance there will be a fair amount I won’t be able to discuss yet about those media deals because they haven’t been finalized.”
Once WBD is notified of the new deals, it will have five days to match and has reportedly chosen to go for Amazon’s package as it is the cheapest (relatively speaking) of the three.
Asked at the press conference if the five-day countdown had started, Silver said: “I can’t get into how those machinations work.”
If WBD does take Amazon’s package, it will likely propose splitting games between its TNT network and Max streaming service.
TNT has been airing NBA games since 1984.
Some media reports suggest WBD’s matching rights talks with the NBA could potentially turn into a legal battle.
In terms of the other broadcasters, NBC will pay an average of $2.5 billion a year to the NBA and show around 100 games per season, with half to air on its Peacock OTT platform.
Disney, meanwhile, will pay the largest amount at around $2.6 billion per year, up from $1.5 billion in the current agreement, and continue to show the NBA Finals. However, ESPN and ABC will air fewer games under the new deal.
TNT and ESPN’s current deals, worth a combined total of $24 billion, run through the 2024-25 season.
Meanwhile, the women’s WNBA is set for a huge rise in broadcast revenue from the new rights deals, it has been reported.
The league would be included in the NBA’s new $76-billion deal and could pocket $200 million annually for 11 years, according to The Athletic.
The WNBA’s current media deals, which also expire in 2025, bring in $50 million a year, meaning the reported new agreement would quadruple that amount.
The women’s competition could also net further income from other broadcast partners.
This comes amid the WNBA’s rise in popularity with talented rookies Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese significantly boosting the league’s profile and appeal.
At the halfway point of the 2024 season, average attendance is 9,311, the largest figure since the 1990s.
More significantly, TV viewership has increased massively, with ESPN claiming its audiences are up 183% compared to last season.
The most recent clash between Clark’s Indiana Fever and Reese’s Chicago Sky last month became the league’s most-watched game in 23 years, drawing in 2.25 million viewers.
