The high-stakes showdown could send the parties to court and keep the outcome of the NBA’s television rights in limbo for the foreseeable future.
“We are proud of the way we have served basketball fans by providing the best coverage ever throughout our four-decade partnership with the NBA. In an effort to continue our long-standing partnership, during the exclusive and non-exclusive negotiation periods, we acted in good faith to make strong and fair offers to both parties,” TNT, formerly known as Turner Sports, wrote in a statement.
“We look forward to the NBA executing our new contract,” TNT added.
An NBA spokesman said the league has received WBD’s proposal and is reviewing it.
The NBA can either accept or reject the proposal, meaning TNT would simply take over the Amazon deal. If the NBA rejects the proposal, as expected, Warner Bros. would have the option to sue the league.
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, owner of The Washington Post.
The NBA is expected to receive a huge sum from deals that will go into effect after next season from ESPN, Comcast and Amazon. According to media reports and people familiar with the deals, ESPN will pay $2.6 billion annually for the NBA Finals, among other games; Comcast, which owns NBC, will pay $2.5 billion for the regular season and playoffs; and Amazon will pay $1.8 billion for a smaller package that still includes the playoffs and some conference finals series. (TNT’s public statement did not specify that it was specifically matching Amazon’s deal.)
The league had an exclusive negotiating window with its previous partners, Disney-owned ESPN and WBD-owned TNT, that expired in April, and has spent the past several months finalizing its new deals. But according to people familiar with the previous deals, those networks have what are called back-end rights, making it difficult for the league or a content provider to ditch a media partner.
How strong those matching rights are may be up for debate. The NBA hopes its terms with Amazon are different enough that WBD’s offer isn’t a true match. Amazon is a streaming platform, and TNT is a cable network. Prime Video has more subscribers than WBD’s streaming platform, Max. Meanwhile, there’s a belief inside TNT that the distribution details are less important than Amazon’s financial terms, which it will match.
A person familiar with the negotiations said WBD has made several attempts to reach a new deal with the league, including getting a smaller fourth package of games and trying to recruit Google’s YouTube to partner in a joint challenge to the Amazon deal.
TNT has aired NBA games since 1989 and is the league’s longest-running media partner. The channel airs the pre- and post-game “Inside the NBA” show, starring Charles Barkley, one of the most popular figures in sports media. Barkley has criticized TNT after reports in recent months suggested the network “The NBA is going to lose. These guys I work with, they screwed this up, obviously,” Barkley said. He said on The Dan Patrick Show in May,.