NBA Reportedly Closing In On $76 Billion TV Deal With NBC, Amazon & ESPN

The National Basketball Association is nearing a massive broadcast deal with NBC, Disney’s ESPN, and Amazon that would bring as much as $76 billion in media revenue over 11 years, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the deal talks.  

Negotiations are ongoing, the people said. They provided some color of just how much NBC, ESPN, and Amazon are expected to fork over annually for NBA broadcast rights for games: 

NBC is near an accord with the league to pay an average of $2.5 billion a year, people familiar with the deal talks said. It would show around 100 games per season, with about half airing exclusively on the Peacock streaming service, reflecting a major bet on the future of streaming. Games would air on NBC on Tuesdays and Sundays when there isn’t a conflict with NBC’s “Sunday Night Football.”

Amazon’s $1.8 billion-a-year package would include regular-season and playoff games, the new NBA in-season tournament, and the “play-in” games in which teams compete for the final playoff spots. It also would have a share of the conference finals, which the media partners will split in a rotation, the people familiar with the terms said.

Disney would retain an NBA package and would continue to air the NBA Finals, with payments averaging about $2.6 billion a year, people familiar with the terms say, up from $1.5 billion under the current deal. Disney would get fewer games than under its current deal. ESPN’s deal will allow the company to air games on its direct-to-consumer streaming service, which is set to launch in 2025.

The deals would take effect after the 2024-25 season. This comes as new ratings data from Nielsen show a decline in postseason viewership.

Here’s more from sports blog Sportico:

According to Nielsen live-plus-same-day data, the opening salvo of the NBA postseason averaged 3.52 million viewers across ABC, ESPN and TNT/truTV, which marks a 9% decline compared to the year-ago 3.86 million.

Each of the league’s 30 teams plays 82 games in the regular season that are mostly meaningless. Most anyone who watches tunes in for the postseason playoffs.

Additional Nielsen data via WSJ shows the NBA has more games than the NFL but draws much lower ratings. 

Source: WSJ 

Could this be the peak media deal for the NBA?