A New York state court has unsealed redacted versions of contracts related to the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) television agreements with Comcast’s NBC Universal and Amazon’s Prime Video that are set to take effect late next year.
The contracts were disclosed as part of an ongoing lawsuit filed by Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) against the NBA after the professional basketball league after the broadcaster lost a bidding war that would have kept a package of games on its TNT Sports networks after the current season ends.
Lawyers for WBD argue the NBA violated its current contract with the broadcaster, which includes a clause that allows it to match an offer for games made by a competitor — in this case, Amazon. WBD says the NBA wrongfully rejected an offer that essentially matched Amazon’s on a financial basis. The NBA disputes this, saying WBD’s offer did not include global streaming rights and certain financial details that were more-favorable in the Amazon bid.
The unsealing of the contracts do not settle the matter one way or another, but they do offer insight into which games will be offered through Prime Video and Comcast’s NBC and Peacock.
The contract takes effect with the 2025-26 season and lasts for at least 11 years. During that time, Amazon’s Prime Video will offer at least 60 regular-season games, including one or two games on Black Friday that will air immediately after its National Football League (NFL) game. Amazon will also offer Thursday night basketball games at the conclusion of the NFL season in February, Friday games all season long and all six NBA Play-In tournament games.
Those details are not new — The Desk reported them back in July, when the NBA announced the telecast deal. But the contracts reveal more-granular details of when Amazon will have the rights to certain post-season games, including conference finals.
The contracts show Amazon will have “two games fewer than one-third of the total games in round one and two” of the playoffs, starting with the first year of the agreement. That amounts to between 14 and 26 games in the first year, split between 9 and 17 games in the first round and 5 to 9 games in the second.
Amazon will also have the rights to stream the conference finals via Prime video on alternating years of the agreement, starting with the second year, and consecutively in the 10th and 11th years. Prime Video will stream an equal number of Eastern Conference and Western Conference final games during the term of the agreement in those years.
All games streamed through Prime Video are required to be transmitted in high definition (1080p) and utilize the High Dynamic Range (HDR) standard, the agreement says. Amazon is also responsible for creating new theme music that will accompany its live NBA broadcasts, and is allowed to distribute a whip-around style program called “NBA Tonight” that Amazon will be allowed to distribute on Thursdays and Fridays, but not on Saturdays.
Amazon is required to ensure that the NBA games distributed through Prime Video or other platforms reach at least 80 million paid digital subscribers between October 2024 and April 2028, the contract says.
Comcast’s agreement with the NBA allows it to offer 100 live regular-season games, starting next year. That will include a double-header game played on Tuesday, one of which will stream exclusively on Peacock, as well as a Peacock-exclusive game that streams Monday evenings. The Tuesday games will vary by region, the contract says. Comcast will also have the right to offer games on Sunday nights when the NFL is not currently in season.
Again, none of this is new information — the NBA and Comcast disclosed that would be the case when the partnership was announced earlier this summer.
What is new is that the NBA’s agreement with Comcast affords it far more post-season games than previously believed: Under the contract, Comcast has the rights to at least 15 guaranteed and 8 “if necessary” playoff games each year, as well as games from the Eastern and Western Conference finals on alternating years, starting with the first year.
The NBA says Christmas Day games are not included in the agreement with Comcast, even if the holiday falls on a day of the week during which NBC and Peacock would otherwise have the rights to those games. Typically, those games have aired on Disney-owned ESPN and ABC, which is the third stakeholder in the NBA’s comprehensive media rights agreement.
Comcast will also have the rights to two “tip off” games per season, one or both of which offered in prime-time, and all of which will be available on NBC-owned broadcast stations across the country. Comcast-owned Telemundo will also have the rights to distribute a handful of games in Spanish, though the precise number was redacted in the contract released by the court this week. Part of the regular-season package includes Comcast-exclusive games on certain holidays, including President’s Day; Martin Luther King, Jr. Day; Veteran’s Day and New Year’s Day in 2029, and to run against the NCAA Championship game.
As part of the agreement, Comcast is required to advertise its NBA games against other highly-viewed programming, with mandated promotional spots running during the Super Bowl (in years when NBC has the rights to the game), the Summer and Winter Olympic Games, the Summer and Winter Paralympic Games, the Today Show, the Tonight Show, the Thanksgiving Day Parade and professional soccer tournaments.
Both Amazon and Comcast have the right to produce alternative telecasts of NBA games, though they’re not obligated to do so.
