The clock is officially ticking on TNT Sports as it weighs the future of its 40-year NBA relationship.
TNT confirmed to Front Office Sports that it has officially received contracts spelling out dueling third-party offers for the NBA’s media rights starting with the 2025–26 season. The Warner Bros. Discovery–owned TNT is “reviewing them and preparing a response in view of its matching rights,” said a spokesperson.
TNT got the contracts Wednesday night, say my sources. So it will have approximately five days, until next Monday, to “match” either Amazon Prime Video’s $1.8 billion–per-year offer or NBC’s $2.5 billion–per-year bid. (Disney’s ABC/ESPN is expected to retain the NBA’s TV “A” package, including the NBA Finals, at a price of $2.8 billion per year.)
My sources tell me TNT is far more likely to match Prime’s offer than NBC’s. The network behind Charles Barkley’s Emmy Award–winning Inside the NBA is also holding out hope for a less-expensive fourth rights package that would keep it in the live NBA game business. Deadline reported this week that TNT intended to match the Amazon offer.
Whether TNT will finally match the competing offers is yet to be seen. But WBD’s pugnacious boss David Zaslav doesn’t want to go down in sports history as the executive who “lost” the NBA. Zaslav has repeatedly cited his ability to match competing bids; it’s not clear whether he actually has the legal right to do so. If Zaslav tries to match, and the NBA says no, he may argue in a suit that TNT went to the mat to keep its rights, while the NBA negotiated in bad faith this time around.
It’s rare for media entities to choose the nuclear option of suing league partners. What league would want to do business with a litigious TV partner? But it has happened. More than 50 years ago, legendary ABC Sports boss Roone Arledge sued the NBA after the league bypassed incumbent ABC in favor of an outside bid from CBS Sports. In what became known as “Roone’s Revenge,” ABC sued the NBA, then counterprogrammed CBS’s NBA games.
Live sports rights are the last block holding up the TV ecosystem. All told, the NBA is poised to cash in to the tune of $76 billion over 11 years from rights partners.
Michael McCarthy’s “Tuned In” column is at your fingertips every week with the latest insights and ongoings around sports media. If he hears it, you will, too.
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