NBA approves new media deals with Disney (ABC/ESPN), Comcast (NBC), and Amazon for 11 years, $77 billion. Update: NBA REJECTS WBD's (TNT Sports) deal

[Frangala]

The NBA is about to come out on top and negotiated well. All the incumbent channels (Disney/ESPN/ABC) involved would be paying more for less content because streaming is getting a portion of the games.

One of the main reasons why some people are not completely "cutting the chord" for cable and completely switching to streaming is because of live sports. Live sports attract ad revenues for the TV networks and they can't lose that especially 24/7 sports channels like ESPN.

In addition, there were multiple bidders for broadcasting rights Amazon, Disney, Warner Bros/TNT, NBC which also made the price for broadcasting rights increase.

NBA is a winner here including its players (increase in contract earnings), teams' valuation are about to increase as well which is good for owners intending to sell teams and cash out plus the NBA permitted that institutional investors like private equity firms can now buy teams as opposed to just wealthy individuals.

So when these players are complaining about load management, Silver should show them this. Them giving their best efforts to play leads to more money from broadcasting rights flowing into the league and more lucrative contracts. It's amazing how some players and fans do not understand that.

 

[Gritsngravy]

Wasn’t the tnt people talking shyt like they wasn’t going to pay what the nba was asking for not too long ago?

 

[aceboon]

 

[FAH1223]

Wasn’t the tnt people talking shyt like they wasn’t going to pay what the nba was asking for not too long ago?

That was Zaslav but he switched up quick afterwards. Was hanging with Adam Silver at the All-Star game. Adam was then talking about how he likes streaming games on Max, etc.

 

[K-Apps]

Charles Barkley got a little out over his skis this morning when he said he thought a decision on Warner Bros. Discovery’s stewardship of the NBA’s big cable TV package would be made by the end of the day. While a plume of white smoke is expected to emerge from the metaphorical chimney at 645 Fifth Ave. within the next few weeks, there is no hard and fast deadline for an announcement on how the league’s next media rights package will shake out.

Speaking Friday morning on The Dan Patrick Show, the Inside the NBA mainstay suggested that a proclamation was imminent. “I think they are going to make a decision by the end of the day,” Barkley said. “I don’t think any of us know what that decision is going to be. It’s very stressful at work right now.”

Unfortunately for Barkley and his stressed-out colleagues at TNT Sports, the pins-and-needles anticipation won’t be letting up as quickly as they would seem to prefer. More to the point, the prospect of Warner Bros. Discovery sustaining its 40-year collaboration with the NBA is likely not anywhere near as dire as many would seem to believe—this despite Comcast’s staggering $2.5 billion offer.

We set down the argument for a WBD victory here; long story short-ish, TNT Sports needs the NBA a hell of a lot more than NBC does, and while necessity doesn’t always win the day, it’s now almost impossible to imagine a scenario in which WBD CEO David Zaslav makes with the alligator arms when the time comes to break out the checkbook. (Yeah, we know what he said in back in November of 2022. That’s called negotiating in public.)

Even sports-world heavies like The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, who seems convinced that NBC is about to successfully emerge as the spoiler, have acknowledged that Comcast has a history of puckishly inserting itself in negotiations—a practice that sometimes results in a rival paying through the nose for an asset that wasn’t necessarily a must-have for NBC. When Comcast in 2018 made a competing bid of $65 billion for the 21stCentury Fox entertainment assets coveted by Disney, the Mouse House found itself upping its offer to $71.3 billion.

Whether Comcast actually wanted those assets is now immaterial; in the end, that deal is one of the reasons why Nelson Peltz remains a stone in Bob Iger’s shoe. (Shortly before Peltz lost his proxy fight at Disney a month ago, the billionaire singled out the Fox deal as “strategically flawed.”)

For his part, Simmons sees NBC walking away with the pot, although he isn’t averse to assigning a bit of mischief to the network’s parent company. “Comcast is the guy in your fantasy football draft who keeps bidding up the guys you like,” Simmons joked this week during a hit on Matthew Belloni’s podcast. “He already has Mahomes, but he’s like, ‘No, no, I’m also in on Justin Herbert: $16!’ And all of the sudden you’re paying $29 for Justin Herbert and you’re like … ‘why did you do that to me?!?’”

WBD execs are currently putting together a counteroffer.

As Wall Street awaits a resolution on the final piece of the NBA’s national rights package, the league stands to make good on its internal goal to treble its annual media payments. Disney’s offer to retain the “A” package (which includes the NBA Finals) shakes out to some $2.6 billion per year, and WBD will need to match Comcast’s offer. With Amazon set to pour as much as $2 billion a year for the all-new streaming package, the average annual haul could end up in the neighborhood of $7 billion. The legacy Disney/WBD contract is worth $2.6 billion per year.

Duration, pricing and other terms have been sketched out as part of the Disney and Amazon bids, but no official deals are in place. That said, the new NBA package is expected to extend through at least through the end of the 2035-36 season.

Based on the estimates that are in play, the final NBA rights deal should pay off with a compound annual growth rate, or CAGR, of between 7% to 9%. As the anonymous finance pro Entertainment Strategy Guy pointed out yesterday via a thread posted to his X account, the league’s legacy package boasts a 12% CAGR.

Still, it’s hard to look at the numbers the NBA’s wrangling and not interpret this as a massive win for Adam Silver, who is on the cusp of pulling off what’s very likely the last blockbuster sports-rights deal of the cable-TV era

 

[FAH1223]

Zaslav has no choice!

 

[William Heavy]

NBATV broadcasts like 100 games per year. NBA should sell the rights to half the games to either WB or Comcast. ESPN gets the A package, NBC the B, WB and Amazon can split the rest.

 

[K-Apps]

 

[Black Hans]

Amazon doing the exact deal I thought they'd do Hopefully TNT re-signs.

 

[Jplaya2023]

So we gotta sacrifice Inside The NBA in order to retrieve the Soul Stone?



I'm torn apart.Severely conflicted right now

Now i know how thanos feels

 

[Jplaya2023]

Why cant the nba just play nice here.

Sell the rights to nbc, espn and tnt. Have them split the bill 3 ways and put the finals on nbc and abc rotate every year.

TNT gets exclusive rights to the 1st 2 rounds of the playoffs (to make up for not having tue finals). ABC and NBC each gets the conference finals rotating conferences every year.

For the finals the inside the nba crew is allowed to go on either abc or nbc and they do their show from that network.


In the regular season TNT/TBS gets the tuesday, wed, thursday slots for nba games. Monday and Friday is ESPN/ABC and Saturday and Sunday are NBC tripleheheaders. Amazon and Peacock(i know its nbc) can stream games on their platforms and nba tv can be like an everyday redzone where they can show all the games that are on that day.

 

[#1 pick]

Why cant the nba just play nice here.

Sell the rights to nbc, espn and tnt. Have them split the bill 3 ways and put the finals on nbc and abc rotate every year.

TNT gets exclusive rights to the 1st 2 rounds of the playoffs (to make up for not having tue finals). ABC and NBC each gets the conference finals rotating conferences every year.

For the finals the inside the nba crew is allowed to go on either abc or nbc and they do their show from that network.


In the regular season TNT/TBS gets the tuesday, wed, thursday slots for nba games. Monday and Friday is ESPN/ABC and Saturday and Sunday are NBC tripleheheaders. Amazon and Peacock(i know its nbc) can stream games on their platforms and nba tv can be like an everyday redzone where they can show all the games that are on that day.

The 1st idea is already off the table as ABC signed for exclusive rights to the NBA Finals.

I don't know what could happen. The NBA only has three packages as of right now.

 

[firemanBk]

Why cant the nba just play nice here.

Sell the rights to nbc, espn and tnt. Have them split the bill 3 ways and put the finals on nbc and abc rotate every year.

TNT gets exclusive rights to the 1st 2 rounds of the playoffs (to make up for not having tue finals). ABC and NBC each gets the conference finals rotating conferences every year.

For the finals the inside the nba crew is allowed to go on either abc or nbc and they do their show from that network.


In the regular season TNT/TBS gets the tuesday, wed, thursday slots for nba games. Monday and Friday is ESPN/ABC and Saturday and Sunday are NBC tripleheheaders. Amazon and Peacock(i know its nbc) can stream games on their platforms and nba tv can be like an everyday redzone where they can show all the games that are on that day.

The NBA wasn't gonna get anywhere close to the money they wanted without Amazon
They needed Amazon to drive the price up
If it was just the same 3 carriers competing with no chance of losing coverage completely, the price goes way down

 

[FAH1223]

Skipper seems to be cautioning shutting off WBD

 

[FAH1223]

Why cant the nba just play nice here.

Sell the rights to nbc, espn and tnt. Have them split the bill 3 ways and put the finals on nbc and abc rotate every year.

TNT gets exclusive rights to the 1st 2 rounds of the playoffs (to make up for not having tue finals). ABC and NBC each gets the conference finals rotating conferences every year.

For the finals the inside the nba crew is allowed to go on either abc or nbc and they do their show from that network.


In the regular season TNT/TBS gets the tuesday, wed, thursday slots for nba games. Monday and Friday is ESPN/ABC and Saturday and Sunday are NBC tripleheheaders. Amazon and Peacock(i know its nbc) can stream games on their platforms and nba tv can be like an everyday redzone where they can show all the games that are on that day.

Amazon is going to be paying $1.8 billion a year. And they’re going to have one night a week where they broadcast all the games.