It's not official yet but the Associated Press announces that the NBA has validated its new TV contract, for $76 billion over 11 years. The legal terms are thus finalized, even if the officialization will not take place for a few days, TNT still having the formal right to match NBC's offer…
The league's Board of Governors, which brings together the owners, will then vote to end the long period of negotiations at a meeting to be held next week in Las Vegas.
As a reminder, this new broadcast agreement will begin in 2025/26. ESPN/ABC will retain the top prize for $2.6 billion per year, with exclusive rights to broadcast the Finals, a conference final, several prime-time games each week, WNBA games and a portion of the international rights.
For $2.5 billion a year, NBC should therefore replace TNT for the second batch, with a “Basketball Night in America” show that will replace the equivalent American football show every Sunday at the end of the NFL season. The network will also broadcast games on Thursday nights during the regular season, as well as on Mondays on its streaming service, Peacock.
What impact for France?
Finally, for $1.8 billion per year, Amazon will get the third lot, with the NBA Cup, the Play-In, regular season games and playoffs with a conference final (alternating with NBC), WNBA games as well as international broadcasting rights.
For the NBA, this agreement will generate a new increase in its revenues, for the franchises and for the players, salaries being directly linked to this influx of money from broadcasters.
In 1998, TV rights brought in $650 million per year to the NBA, which put the salary cap at $30 million and the average salary at $2.5 million. With this new agreement, the Major League will pocket nearly $7 billion per year, and the salary cap should exceed $170 billion. Even taking into account inflation, this is a five- or six-fold increase in contracts in 25 years.
It also remains to be seen what this new deal will mean for international rights. In France, beIN Sports' broadcast deal has expired and must be renegotiated. Could the arrival of Amazon, and its international service Prime Video, be a game-changer for the Qatari channel?
