Late last week, the NBA’s Board of Governors approved its new 11-year, $76 billion rights deal with ESPN, NBC, and Amazon, with TNT the odd network out. While TNT tried to match Amazon’s package, the league announced on Wednesday that they were rejecting that match offer and moving forward with the streaming giant as their third partner — which likely means a legal battle is coming soon.
Within all of that, the WNBA also has a new rights deal alongside the NBA’s, as the league also officially announced on Wednesday their portion of the new 11-year deal (worth a reported $2.2 billion) with the same three networks. ESPN and Amazon are part of the current TV deal, but NBC is the new addition, and will seemingly be replacing CBS as the network TV partner (with ABC also continuing to carry games as part of the Disney/ESPN package). According to the league, the new agreement means ESPN and ABC will carry a minimum of 25 regular season games, NBC platforms (including USA and Peacock) will carry 50 games, and Prime Video will carry 30 games.
The biggest change is that the playoffs and Finals will now rotate between the networks. ESPN and ABC will carry eight semifinals and five Finals, while Prime Video and NBC will carry seven semifinals and three Finals each. ESPN networks will continue to have All-Star and the WNBA Draft, while Prime Video will retain the Commissioner’s Cup championship game.
