The exclusive rights window for ESPN and TNT to work out a new deal with the NBA to remain their national broadcast partners passed recently (as expected), and the league has been shopping rights to a number of other networks and streamers.
The NBA has not been shy about their desire to look beyond the traditional cable bundle with their new rights deal, and it appears they are close to a deal that will send a significant portion of their national schedule to Amazon. According to Andrew Marchand of The Athletic, the two sides have agreed to the framework of a deal that would give Amazon both regular season and playoff games.
It is expected that Prime Video’s package will include significant regular season and postseason games, perhaps even some conference finals. The anticipation is that the final contract will be for at least a decade and begin the 2025-2026 season.
Marchand also confirmed reports that ESPN will remain on board as a main partner, but will decrease their regular season broadcast load (possibly by as many as 20 games) to make room for a third network partner. The rest of the package will likely go to either TNT (Warner Bros. Discovery) or NBC, with TNT having the right to match any deal to retain rights.
Once that last piece of the rights puzzle is agreed to, we will learn the full scale of the deal, how games in both the regular season and playoffs will be split, and how much the league will bring in annually from the new contracts.
