NBA Finalizing Broadcast Deals with Amazon and Disney, with Turner and NBC in Play
NBA Finalizing Broadcast Deals with Amazon and Disney, with Turner and NBC in Play
The NBA has reportedly agreed to national broadcast deals with both Disney/ESPN and Amazon Prime. These ten-year contracts will keep the NBA Finals on ABC, and might expand the number of games exclusively available nationally. The reports come from Andrew Marchand at The Athletic and John Ourand at The Puck. The deals are not yet finalized, and both NBA/Peacock and Turner’s TNT (streaming via HBO) are still negotiating on top of the existing deal. NBA TV is run by Turner, and its status is also unclear.
If these games are indeed exclusives, this will lead to a dilemma for NBA fans: With the additional fracturing of the viewing market, fans will have to consider how to watch all of their favorite team’s games. It will end the era where a subscription to the right cable service would guarantee all games; they would still need to add at least one subscription service to see every game, and possibly multiple national subscriptions before working out local broadcasts.
These NBA negotiations are purely for nationally-televised (or streamed) games, and unrelated to local broadcast rights. Local broadcast rights only apply to a team’s games that are not exclusively on national networks. And with the possibility of more games shown in national agreements, there may be a slightly smaller remaining subset of local games after this deal.
As for the Portland Trail Blazers, they are currently contracted to ROOT Sports Northwest, however, there are many rumors swirling that they will exit that deal this summer, like the NHL’s Seattle Kraken will reportedly do. This may lead to access via local networks over television antennas or cable, and/or streaming options. More updates will likely arrive over the summer.