NBA Rejects Warner’s Bid to Stay in Basketball, Signs Deals With Amazon, Disney, NBCU

variety.com:

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor The NBA has blocked one of Warner Bros. Discovery’s last shots on the clock. The basketball league on Wednesday rejected Warner’s effort to shoulder its way in to a new set of rights packages already crafted for Amazon, Disney and NBCUniversal that will generate an estimated $76 billion over an 11-year period All are slated to begin in the NBA’s 2026 season.

To try and stay in the game, Warner would have to launch a legal salvo asking courts to decide that the NBA has denied what it believes is its right to match the terms of a package that contains games it would have been able to show under its current pact, which expires after the next NBA season ends in 2025. “Warner Bros.

Discovery’s most recent proposal did not match the terms of Amazon Prime Video’s offer and, therefore, we have entered into a long-term arrangement with Amazon,” the league said in a statement.

A spokesman for Warner’s TNT Sports was not able to offer immediate comment. Under terms of the three new pacts, each of which ends after the 2036 season, Disney will retain the NBA Finals exclusively; Amazon will have global rights to 66 regular-season NBA games, including an opening week doubleheader and a new “Black Friday” NBA game; and NBCU will show 100 national regular season games across NBC and Peacock.