By TANIA GANGULI
Warner Bros. Discovery said Monday that it had matched a rival offer to air NBA games, a move aimed at allowing the company to keep the lucrative broadcast rights it has held for decades.
The competing offer was from Amazon, which has offered to pay the league a little more than $1.9 billion per season, according to two people familiar with the discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss contract talks.
“We have reviewed the offers and matched one of them,” Warner Bros. Discovery said in a statement. An NBA spokesperson said, “We’ve received WBD’s proposal and are in the process of reviewing it.”
Warner Bros. Discovery did not identify which broadcast package it matched, but said its current contract allowed it to keep the rights if it matched competing offers. This so-called matching rights provision is “an integral part of our current agreement and the rights we have paid for under it,” the company’s statement said, adding, “We look forward to the NBA executing our new contract.”
The NBA has negotiated new rights contracts to broadcast its games the season after next. Last week, the league’s board of governors approved deals with Disney, Comcast and Amazon which are expected to bring in about $76 billion over the next 11 years. Disney, the parent of ESPN, and Warner Bros. Discovery paid roughly $2.66 billion annually under the old deal.
Warner Bros. Discovery has been broadcasting NBA games since the 1980s. Its channel, TNT, is home to the beloved show “Inside the NBA” in which former players Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith and Shaquille O’Neal banter about the NBA with Ernie Johnson, the show’s host.
If the NBA declines to accept Warner Bros. Discovery’s matching efforts, the two sides will continue conversations, and Warner Bros. Discovery could pursue legal action, according to one of the people familiar with the discussions.
Amazon’s package of games would include one conference finals series every other year, split with Comcast; the league’s newly renamed in-season tournament; and the play-in tournament.
Amazon would stream all of its games on its Prime streaming service, which could represent a tension point in the matching discussions. Warner Bros. Discovery primarily broadcasts games on TNT, though it did simulcast all TNT games on the streaming service Max last season.
The company had an exclusive negotiating window, as did Disney, which also broadcasts NBA games under the current contract. But while Disney reached an agreement with the league during that time, Warner Bros. Discovery did not.
“Regrettably, the league notified us of its intention to accept other offers for the games in our current rights package, leaving us to proceed under the matching rights provision,” the statement from TNT Sports read.
The NBA sent the rival contracts to Warner Bros. Discovery on Wednesday, giving the company five days to submit an offer to match.
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