There are so many questions swirling around the NBA and their upcoming new broadcasting rights deals. Perhaps there’s no bigger aspect to those potential changes than Warner Bros. Discovery losing their NBA right package, which would mean there was no more use for TNT Sports’ Inside the NBA.
While many reports have discussed things as a done deal, with ESPN/Disney, Amazon, and NBC taking on the new NBA media rights, others are claiming that TNT isn’t out of it yet. NBA commissioner Adam Silver even said the door was still open recently, saying “We’re all still talking.”
Silver spoke with the media on Thursday before Game 1 of the NBA Finals and added some clarifying thoughts on media negotiations and how he’ll feel if Inside the NBA goes away.
“It has been difficult,” Silver said. “That show, in particular, is special and I have a close relationship with everyone who’s on that show from the time they played in the league. And Ernie [Johnson] and I have been friends forever.
“At the same time, it’s not just the talent, of course. There’s hundreds of people who are involved with, what I still refer to as Turner Sports, who have been longtime friends and colleagues. On one hand, from the league standpoint, it’s fantastic to be liked and to be wanted and to have multiple suitors. At the same time, it makes me uncomfortable, but it’s zero-sum.
“At the end of the day, there’s only gonna be so many television packages, Finals games, playoff games, regular season games to distribute. I will say directly from me to the people who seem to be most impacted right now, the folks at Turner Sports, is I apologize that this has been a prolonged process.”
He later added, “No one likes this uncertainty and it’s on the league office to bring these negotiations to a head and conclude them as quickly as they can.”
That’s a lot of words to say “It’s a bummer but money’s money.”
Along with that, Silver also addressed what makes Amazon such an attractive media partner by comparison.
“If you watch where eyeballs are going, we’re all moving into watching premium programming on streaming services,” he said. “Trying to predict how fast this will move is what’s so difficult,” he said. “There has been a faster decline in cable, viewership, and usage, than people were predicting only even two years ago. The move is happening fast to streaming services. So what we’re trying to do as part of these television deals is middle the broadcast platform, of course we have the Finals on ABC, still matter tremendously to us.”
Perhaps the most intriguing part of the conversation was when Sports Business Journal reporter Tom Friend asked Silver to clarify if, as reported, WBD has “matching rights” for NBC’s and Amazon’s offers.
“I’m not gonna get into that only because it’s a complex legal issue,” said Silver.
Damn straight. Props to @SBJ's Tom Friend
And now we get to see a good number of lawyers make a lot of money in the coming weeks crafting arguments as to what "match" means in the current deals. https://t.co/lASfaZa5QJ
— Austin Karp (@AustinKarp) June 7, 2024
In other words, WBD isn’t out of the running just yet, one way or another, even if the odds are stacked against them.
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