NBC is ready to play ball once again.
The Comcast-backed broadcast network is preparing a bid for certain national telecast rights to National Basketball Association (NBA) games for around $2.5 billion per year, according to a report published by the Wall Street Journal on Monday.
The report comes as the NBA is exploring different avenues for offering pro-basketball games over the next decade as the current national rights package shared by the Walt Disney Company’s ESPN and Warner Bros Discovery’s (WBD) TNT Sports comes to an end.
A stipulation in Disney and WBD’s current contracts with the league allowed them to negotiate an extension or new deal for national telecast rights. That window of exclusivity closed last week; according to media reports, Disney was able to secure a new deal that offers some national NBA telecasts for its ESPN and ABC television networks, which leaves the TNT Sports broadcasts up for grabs.
WBD is still negotiating toward a national telecast deal, though it isn’t clear if the company is willing to pay more than the $1.2 billion they currently spend on the rights to air basketball games. Their agreement with the NBA ended prior to this season’s NBA playoffs, which are currently being broadcast on ABC and ESPN.
NBC is one of the NBA’s oldest on-again, off-again broadcast partners: Its first national game took place in 1954 when the Boston Celtics took on the Rochester Royals (present-day Sacramento Kings) in upstate New York. NBC stopped airing NBA games in 1962., only to pick them up again from NBC in 1990.
NBC has not broadcast a nationally-televised NBA game since 2002. But the network’s parent company, Comcast, continues to enjoy a lucrative local broadcast agreement with the NBA to air teams on its NBC Sports-branded regional networks in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Sacramento (NBC Sports California) and San Francisco (NBC Sports Bay Area).
Comcast’s $2.5 billion bid for NBA rights would bring pro-basketball back to the network for the first time in more than two decades. The package would also include distribution on Comcast’s premium streaming service, Peacock, similar to an arrangement the company has with the National Football League (NFL) and Major League Baseball (MLB).
Amazon is also discussing ways to offer more NBA games through its Prime Video service, with the tech company negotiating rights to NBA Conference finals, the Journal reported. Meanwhile, Disney is prepared to pay $2.6 billion per year to keep some regular-season games on ESPN and some playoff games on ESPN and ABC. Disney’s package would also allow ABC to continue airing NBA Finals games.
The loss of NBA games for WBD’s TNT Sports would come at an awkward time for the cable network operator, as it is currently developing a sports-centric streaming television service with ESPN and Fox Corporation. If WBD and Disney prevail in securing NBA rights, all nationally televised games would be offered through the forthcoming service — but a takeover by NBC and Amazon would make the forthcoming streaming joint venture less-attractive to basketball fans, who would be forced to bounce between multiple services to watch all nationally-televised games without a cable-like service.
