Warner and Turner Sue the NBA Over Failed Renewal Deal

To paraphrase John Goodman in the 2014 remake of The Gambler , David Zaslav and Warner Bros. Discovery are now treating the NBA like they are “not gentlemen” ... and that they are both “very, very stupid."

On Friday, the media company made good on legal threats made less than 48 hours earlier , filing suit against the league in New York State Supreme Court.

WBD also issued this statement: “Given the NBA’s unjustified rejection of our matching of a third-party offer, we have taken legal action to enforce our rights. We strongly believe this is not just our contractual right, but also in the best interest of fans who want to keep watching our industry-leading NBA content with the choice and flexibility we offer them through our widely distributed WBD video-first distribution platforms — including TNT and Max.”

The 29-page lawsuit , filed by WBD and its Turner Broadcasting System unit, is heavily redacted. And it was filed under seal from the public. However, Next TV was able to obtain a copy of the legal complaint.

The complaint accuses the NBA of breaching its 2014 TV deal with Warner when it entered on Wednesday into an 11-year deal with Amazon that pays the online retail giant an average of $1.8 billion a season.

WBD contends that legacy deal, which expires after the upcoming 2024-25 NBA season, gave it the right to match any rival offer for renewal. Within the filing, Wallach also found a copy of that earlier media rights deal, which includes a “matching rights” provision that’s about 20 pages long. Daniel Wallach, an attorney who writes about legal matters for The Athletic , shared a court link to this legacy deal .

“TBS, now a WBD subsidiary, has been telecasting NBA games for nearly 40 years and is considered an ‘Incumbent’ under the language of the October 2014, ten-year NBA/TBS Agreement (together with all exhibits, the 'Agreement,’ attached hereto as Exhibit 1). As an ‘Incumbent,’ TBS has the right to match any “Third Party Offer” for future NBA telecast rights,“ WBD said in its lawsuit.

“TBS timely exercised these matching rights by accepting a Third Party Offer on the same material terms and conditions that the NBA was willing to accept from Amazon. The NBA, however, has breached the Agreement and deliberately refused to honor TBS’s rights, forcing TBS and WBD to seek judicial intervention,” the suit added.

The suit marks a long, slow and … well, almost seemingly stupid degradation of a fruitful and decades-long partnership between Warner and the NBA, one that gestated the enduringly popular studio show that serves as the de facto voice and conscience of the league, Inside the NBA .

On Wednesday, the NBA said it had inked an finalized an agreement to keep games on The Walt Disney Co.’s ABC and ESPN, as well as return them to NBCUniversal, which had a landmark NBA broadcast run in the Michael Jordan-led 1990s. With a new streaming-focused window for Amazon carved out, the 11-year arrangements collectively will pay the NBA around $77 billion.

Not bad for anyone not named the NFL.

The data visualization experts at @SportsBall posted via X a pretty cool graphic that shows how the three rights packages are distributed:

But Turner and WBD were left out. NBCU ended up getting a package that sort of looks like what TNT has under the current deal, but Warner and TNT Sports are going after the cheaper package carved out for Amazon. The streaming-focused rights grouping seems like an odd mix for still-linear-focused TNT, with a lot of it centered around the November frame of the new In-Season Tournament leading into Black Friday in late November, Amazon's biggest profit period.

Amazon will also serve as a international distribution mechanism for the league, which described the online retailer’s role as a “third-party global destination” for NBA League Pass

So, yeah, again, it seems a little … stupid that anyone else besides Amazon would pay billions of dollars or this package after letting the other one go to NBCU.

TMT watchers generally trace the dissonance between the league and the media company back to 2022, when CEO Zaslav famously and clumsily declared, "We don't need the NBA."

On Thursday, paywalled Puck ’s John Ourand published some forensics on this dialectic gone bad, chronicling the broader spectrum of ’missed signals, bad communication and frustrated dealmaking“ that culminated in a lawsuit. Zaslav is described as viewing himself as a defender of the Hollywood guard against the Silicon Valley barbarians. (Editor’s thought: Yeah, maybe this was a viable role 10 years ago?)

The NBA still has one season left on TNT as part of the legacy deal. Let's just say in advance that will be interesting.