The high-profile legal tussle between TNT Sports parent company Warner Bros. Discovery and the NBA looms over the start of the upcoming basketball season.
As several executives for the league and newly signed media partner NBC Sports are now pushing to keep key details in the media-rights contracts private, a revised calendar will also likely stretch the case across much of the early part of the upcoming 2024–2025 NBA season.
Among the significant upcoming dates in the dispute:
- Aug. 23: The last date when the NBA can answer WBD’s initial complaint, and when the league is expected to move to dismiss it
- Sept. 20: The last date when WBD is due to file its opposition to the NBA’s motion
- Oct. 2: The last date by which the NBA can file further support to its motion to dismiss
The upcoming NBA response filing, arriving no later than Friday, is expected to be particularly illuminating, as it will likely give further insight into the league’s logic for not striking a deal with WBD, either initially or after the company sought to match Amazon’s “C” package with the league. Those rights, estimated to be valued at more than $1.8 billion per year and including a conference final every other season, also feature early-round playoffs in line with what is currently on NBA TV, weekly regular-season broadcasts, the Emirates NBA Cup, and WNBA rights, among other assets.
When the NBA finalized its new rights deals last month with ESPN, NBC Sports, and Amazon, the league at the time said that WBD “did not match the terms of Amazon Prime Video’s offer,” but it did not go into much detail beyond that.
WBD, however, is alleging three different contract breaches by the NBA in rejecting its matching-rights offer.
Calendar Watching
How soon Judge Joel Cohen of the Supreme Court of the State of New York rules on a motion to dismiss is not known. But the NBA preseason begins Oct. 4 with the return of the NBA Abu Dhabi Games, while the regular-season schedule starts Oct. 22.
As a result, the only way the case won’t run into the season is if Cohen makes a near-immediate ruling to dismiss WBD’s complaint. Assuming the case does extend into the regular season, that means TNT Sports would be operating in the final year of its current contract with the NBA in the midst of its legal action against the league.
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