Warner Bros. Discovery has notified the NBA that it’s exercising its contractual right to match one of the three bids for an NBA package. It didn’t say which in a statement today, but Deadline hears it is Amazon’s package worth $1.8 billion a year.
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“We have reviewed the offers and matched one of them,” WBD said, to “allow fans to keep enjoying our unparalleled coverage, including the best live game productions in the industry and our iconic studio shows and talent, while building on our proven 40-year commitment for many more years.
“Our matching paperwork was submitted to the league today. We look forward to the NBA executing our new contract.”
There was nothing about this in today’s statement of course, but Amazon may have offered to put up a big chunk of cash, The Ringer’s Bill Simmons told Puck, covering several years of the deal in escrow. Deadline hears WBD has a signed letter of credit from banks that would let it do the same.
WBD has been a longtime NBA partner, with Turner Sports carrying games for most of the past four decades. Max is in the mix now to match Amazon’s streaming deal with play simulcast on TNT. The media giant’s exclusive negotiating window with the League ended in April with no new agreement. Although talks continued, the NBA, meanwhile, settled on three other partners — incumbent Disney/ESPN, NBCUniversal and Amazon Prime Video.
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The new 11-year deals, said to total about $76 billion, will start after the 2024-25 season. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver confirmed last week that media deals had been struck but not finalized, since WBD had five days to respond.
“We’re proud of how we have delivered for basketball fans by providing best-in-class coverage throughout our four-decade partnership with the NBA. In an effort to continue our long-standing partnership, during both exclusive and non-exclusive negotiation periods, we acted in good faith to present strong bids that were fair to both parties,” said the note from TNT Sports.
“Regrettably, the league notified us of its intention to accept other offers for the games in our current rights package, leaving us to proceed under the matching rights provision, which is an integral part of our current agreement and the rights we have paid for under it.”
The ball is now in the NBA’s court.
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