Will the 2024/25 season be the last campaign of Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith, Charles Barkley and Shaquille O'Neal on TNT ? According to information from the Wall Street Journaltheir parent company, Warner Bros. Discoverycould thus lose its broadcasting rights to the Grande Ligue.
NBC/Comcast would thus offer nearly 2.5 billion dollars per season to broadcast part of the regular season and playoff matches, with two prime time shows per week. That's twice as much as what TNT is paying in the current deal, with the deal being $1.2 billion per season. As an outgoing broadcaster, Warner Bros. Discovery, however, has the opportunity to match the offer from NBC (which broadcast the NBA from 1990 to 2002), but David Zaslav, the group's big boss, put forward a “reasonable” approach in the negotiations…
Multiplication of contract value
For its part, Disney (ESPN/ABC) should retain its share, again with an increase in the price (from 1.5 billion to 2.6 billion dollars per year) despite a drop in the number of matches broadcast. However, an essential point for the group: the ABC channel would retain control over the broadcast of the Finals.
By adding the arrival of Amazon Prime Video into the equation, and perhaps a fourth broadcaster, the NBA will therefore boost the value of its TV contract, which was $24 million over nine years in the last negotiations.
We are therefore talking about a contract worth between 60 and 72 billion dollars over a total of nine years, or between 6.7 and 8 billion dollars per year.
On the other hand, if NBC regains the broadcast of part of the NBA games, it is bad news for the streaming service that ESPN, FOX and Warner Bros. jointly wanted to launch in the United States.
