Inside the Deal That Sends Barkley and ‘Inside the NBA’ to ESPN

As part of the blockbuster settlement between the NBA and Warner Bros. Discovery that puts an end to WBD’s lawsuit, TNT’s Inside the NBA will move to rival ESPN in a licensing deal starting with the 2025–2026 season. But if Bristol brass think Charles Barkley will be muzzled from taking pot-shots at ESPN, they’re in for a big surprise.

TNT will maintain “complete editorial control” of the award-winning studio show, Front Office Sports has learned from multiple sources with direct knowledge of the plan. 

The Inside the NBA deal is described to me as mostly a rights swap. ESPN gets Inside the NBA from TNT, while TNT gets the rights to more Big 12 college football and basketball games from ESPN. 

Since this past summer, TNT has entered college football and basketball in a big way, picking up partial game rights to the Big 12, Big East, and Mountain West conferences as well as the College Football Playoff.

The outspoken Barkley (who’s repeatedly declared he’d never work for ESPN) will be free to say whatever he wants. It will be fascinating to watch how he reacts to being on ESPN after decades of rejecting their employment overtures—and hilariously poking fun at its coverage. 

Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal, Kenny Smith, and Ernie Johnson will all remain TNT employees, and be available for other WBD projects such as a possible Inside Sports–type program that looks beyond the NBA. And Inside the NBA will continue to be filmed in Atlanta, with the same production team. 

In essence, not much will change except where to find the show on your TV screens. 

“This is a win-win scenario for fans,” one source tells FOS. “The best sports show on TV survives. The Chuckster gets to say whatever the hell he wants. And ESPN finally gets their hands on Barkley and Inside the NBA.” 

Another source added: “Charles will be Charles. ESPN might want to cover their ears.”

The survival of Inside the NBA “saves face” for WBD after its risky decision to sue the NBA, notes a third source. “Fans will take that over any [other] studio production.”

ESPN has openly lusted after Barkley for decades. Meanwhile, its own NBA Countdown studio show has paled in comparison to Inside the NBA and been a revolving door of talent, from Bill Simmons and Jalen Rose to Maria Taylor and Sage Steele.

Barkley signed a monster, 10-year, $210 million contract extension with TNT in 2022.  ESPN is essentially running the Pat McAfee playbook to land him and his colleagues. McAfee is not an ESPN employee, except for his separate contract to appear on College GameDay. Instead, he licenses his eponymous weekday show to the network at a fee of $17 million a year. Under the deal, McAfee retains complete editorial control, which is how he got away with calling fearsome corporate in-fighter Norby Williamson a “rat” trying to “sabotage” his show—on ESPN’s air no less. (Williamson left in April after a 40-year career in Bristol.)

The 61-year-old Barkley earns $21 million a year from TNT. He has said one reason he never jumped to ESPN was he didn’t want to be put through the network’s famous “car wash” of SportsCenter and other studio shows. 

But that was the old ESPN. While praising Sir Charles as a “singular talent,” ESPN’s Burke Magnus told me onstage at the Front Office Sports Tuned In media summit that the mega-star would not have to appear on other programming. Magnus added he made the same assurance to Jason Kelce before the former Eagles center signed up for Monday Night Countdown.

Said Magnus: “I just keep reassuring people that if you come work for us, that doesn’t mean you have to—this narrative gets started that if you come work for us, you also have to do 200 episodes of First Take or Get Up. The car wash—no. The car wash is for people who want their car washed.” 

I’m also picking up other bits and pieces about the deal. First, Inside the NBA will be treated like event programming covering the NBA biggest periods. An ESPN source tells FOS that includes the regular season’s opening and final weeks, All-Star weekend, Christmas Day, the NBA playoffs—and all ABC games after Jan. 1.

WBD also ended up with a “fourth package” of game rights from the NBA—except it will be an all-international package of more than 100 regular-season game telecasts in Northern Europe and Latin America. 

As part of the league’s new $77 billion, 11-year media-rights deals, ESPN, NBC Sports, and Amazon Prime Video will control all U.S. game rights from Opening Day to the NBA Finals.

It also remains to be seen how the blockbuster addition of Barkley & Co. will impact ESPN superstar Stephen A. Smith’s bid to become the first $100 million talent at ESPN. Or the future of NBA Countdown. Smith’s contract is up next year. He’s made it clear he wants to be the highest-paid talent at ESPN. So re-upping Smith is Job No. 1 for ESPN. But NBA Countdown will become strictly second-string with Inside the NBA in the house. 

It’s now all but inevitable that Smith and Barkley will share the same set, on both or either shows, at some point.

The bottom line? When ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro and his No. 2, Magnus, want somebody, they usually get them. When ESPN had the worst broadcast booth among NFL partners, they raided Fox Sports to hire away Troy Aikman and Joe Buck for a combined $165 million over five years. Now they’ve harpooned another white whale talent in the Round Mound of Rebound.

FOS was first to report Wednesday that a settlement between the NBA and WBD was in the works. The Wall Street Journal first reported Saturday on the deal to license Inside the NBA to ESPN. 

TNT, ESPN, and the NBA declined comment for this story.

Editors’ note: This story did not initially note that Inside the NBA would air alongside ABC NBA games taking place after Jan. 1.