LAS VEGAS -- The NBA’s BOG overwhelmingly ratified the league’s
11-year, $76B media rights deal last night -- with only the irascible Knicks likely voting no -- and, according to sources, frozen out incumbent Warner Bros. Discovery now officially intends to match Amazon’s "C" package in a matter of days.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver announced in an evening news conference that the BOG "did approve this stage" of media proposals, but also acknowledged cryptically that there was work to be done "with existing partners." Although Silver would not be specific or even mention WBD by name, the sequence of events is clear.
First, as soon as today, the league will turn over three written contracts to WBD --
ESPN’s reported $2.6B annual bid,
NBCUniversal’s $2.5B bid and
Amazon’s $1.8B bid -- at which point WBD CEO David Zaslav will have five days to match NBC or Amazon. Because Zaslav and Co. believe Amazon’s streaming deal (alternating conference finals, a Thursday package, Friday or Saturday games, NBA Cup, early round playoffs and international rights) is the most fiscally responsible, sources indicated yesterday they will match Amazon with their own streaming service, Max, while simulcasting games on TNT.
The NBA is expected to argue Max is not equal to Amazon (which has a 200 million worldwide ad-supported reach compared to Max’s approximate 100 million), likely leading to either an argument, a lawsuit, a cash settlement or, if WBD has its way, a fourth smaller package. Asked if he anticipates a treacherous ending to negotiations, Silver said, "I don’t have a sense of that. Much of it is outside my control. We’ll see."
While Silver did not offer results of the BOG vote, sources said they were led to believe it went 29-1 -- the "no" emanating from the Knicks, whose owner James Dolan
recently skewered the league in an internal email to other governors. Dolan’s concerns -- such as a flux of national games that chip away at local TV revenue -- were debated in the meeting, while sources said owners also had pointed questions about the potential WBD lawsuit.
"Well, my response is that we try to keep these issues in the family," Silver said of Dolan's email. "Yes, Jim Dolan did send a letter to his partner teams and to the league office, and that was discussed certainly at our meetings. But I don't think it's appropriate to get into the specifics about what was discussed."
However, sources said a small portion of the owners sided with Dolan on only one point: that the league should not point to the rising valuation of franchises to ease owners' concerns about losing local TV money and sponsorships. That implied, at least to a few owners, that selling their teams was their best financial recourse, a premise that they -- like Dolan -- didn't necessarily like to hear.
Otherwise, though, sources called the three-hour meeting a "breeze," and there were also indications that the total value of the media rights package may have leaped closer to $77B over 11 years -- though, unconfirmed. For that reason alone, the sheer magnitude of the deal had many in the league questioning whether WBD truly has the wherewithal, or even the intention, to match. Or whether the marketplace would find them irresponsible for doing so.
As recent as yesterday, WBD laid off 1,000 more employees -- reportedly across its finance, business affairs, and production departments, as well as less than 10 employees from Max -- after similarly cutting back on staff in both 2022 and 2023. The NBA, sources said, has watched knowingly from a distance, and has had a difficult time getting on board with a company in WBD that is worth roughly $17B and reportedly $40B in debt.
Also, in the three months since WBD's exclusive negotiating window with the league closed in April, streaming has incrementally become even more of a sports television mainstay, something that has caught the NBA's fancy. The behemoth NFL, for instance, struck a deal in June to televise Christmas games exclusively on Netflix, after previously committing to stream an Eagles-Packers regular season game on Peacock and a January 2025 Wild Card playoff game on Amazon. The NBA, sources said, was again watching from a distance -- and definitively started looking past WBD to Amazon and Peacock.
Sources said cable television was never even mentioned during yesterday's BOG meeting, and, at last night's news conference, Silver doubled down on the charm of streaming by lauding its customization, personalization, ease of use and availability in multiple languages and angles.
"There's a large portion of our fan br that no longer subscribes to [cable and satellite]," Silver said. "We want to continue serving them. At the same time, streaming has become predominant. We wanted to make sure that going forward our games would be accessible to our fans through various streaming services."
But sources close to WBD believe Max is more than comparable to Amazon and Peacock, and that WBD has already proven to be a digital asset to the NBA for years through Turner-owned Bleacher Report and House of Highlights. "They're everywhere," a source said about Turner's digital outlets. For that reason, sources said WBD believes it has the streaming/digital ammunition to match Amazon, or at least on paper. The NBA seems to disagree and apparently sees Max as a rung below Amazon and Peacock.
Lost in all the ambiguity is also the future of NBA TV, which ironically is produced by Turner Sports in Atlanta. Some sources have speculated that the league will take NBA TV and its digital remnants in-house, to a rebuilt studio in the New York or New Jersey area. Although Silver said last night he has no idea yet what will become of the network, sources said his preference has been to keep NBA TV as a league-owned entity, where his media team can ideate the latest digital technology themselves -- perhaps to keep their new media partners ideating along with them.
The other development yesterday was MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred's admission that
MLB is considering a national RSN conceptat some point -- something the NBA already seems to be ahead of them on. Sources said once the Diamond Sports Group bankruptcy case crystalizes by the end of this month, the NBA may aggregate as few as nine or as many as 20 teams and bring all of their local streaming rights to Amazon or perhaps Apple. It would be their own first version of a national RSN concept, by again utilizing Silver's new favorite word: streaming.
