The NBA has agreed to terms on its new media deal, a record-breaking 11-year, $76 billion deal that would ensure player salaries continue to rise for the foreseeable future and likely change the way some viewers access the game for years to come.
A person familiar with the negotiations told The Associated Press that the networks have the terms and conditions, with the next step being for the league’s board of governors to approve the contracts.
The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity Wednesday because he was not at liberty to discuss such imminent matters.
A board of governors meeting will be held in Las Vegas next week, in conjunction with the NBA Summer League, and it would seem logical that the deals – if approved by various committees and receiving other approvals – could be finalized around that time.
The NBA had no comment Wednesday.
The deal, which set NBA records for both length and total value, will go into effect through the 2025-26 season. Games will continue to air on ESPN and ABC, with some now airing on NBC and Amazon Prime. TNT Sports, which has been part of the league’s broadcast family since the 1980s, may be on its way out, but it has five days left to match one of the deals.
The five-day deadline would begin once the league sends the completed contracts to TNT.
The Athletic was the first to report on the contracts.
ESPN and ABC will continue to carry the league’s top package, which includes the NBA Finals and one of the conference finals series. ABC has aired the NBA Finals since 2003. ABC will continue to air games on Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons, when the NFL regular season ends.
ESPN’s main nights will continue to be Wednesdays with some games on Friday and Sunday.
The finale exclusivity comes with a significant price increase. The Walt Disney Company, which owns ESPN and ABC, will pay $2.6 billion per year under the new deal, up from $1.4 billion under its current contract.
The return of NBC, which broadcast NBA games from 1990 to 2002, gives the league two broadcast network partners for the first time.
NBC, whose deal is expected to be worth $2.5 billion per season, would air games on Sunday nights once the NFL season ends. It would air games on Tuesdays throughout the regular season, while a package of Monday night games would air exclusively on Peacock.
Prime Video would air games on Thursday nights after it finishes airing NFL games. The other nights would be Friday and Saturday.
NBC and Prime Video would take turns sharing the other conference’s finals. Prime Video’s rights would average $1.8 billion per year.
TNT Sports is paying $1.4 billion per season. Given the size of the three packages being offered, that would make the Prime Video rights one the network would likely seek to match.
The length of the contracts — he did not specifically confirm the 11-year deal — is “good for the stability of the league,” Silver said during the NBA Finals last month.
“But it does mean that to some extent you’re trying to predict the future, which of course is impossible,” Silver said in June. “So part of it is betting on the partners that we end up aligning with and their ability to adapt to the times and their willingness to continue to invest in media and also go global, which, as I said earlier, is also very important to the league.”
In the short term, the deal almost certainly means the league’s salary cap will increase by 10% per year, the maximum allowed under the terms of the NBA’s most recent collective bargaining agreement with its players. That means players like Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Dallas’ Luka Doncic could earn around $80 million in the 2030-31 season and raises at least some possibility that top players could be making close to $100 million per season by the mid-2030s.
It also paves the way for the next major item on the NBA’s to-do list: expansion.
Silver has been very clear about the order of his main agenda items over the past few seasons, namely preserving labor peace (which was achieved through the new collective bargaining agreement), securing a new media deal (now essentially done) and only then, and only then, would the league turn its attention to adding new franchises. Las Vegas and Seattle are typically among the cities most mentioned as prime expansion candidates, with others like Montreal, Vancouver and Kansas City also expected to have interested parties.
Over the past 25 years, the total value of broadcast rights has increased, as has that of salaries, due to the share of this revenue stream that ends up feeding the salary cap.
When NBC and Turner agreed to a four-year, $2.6 billion deal beginning in the 1998-99 season, the salary cap was $30 million per team and the average salary was about $2.5 million. The average salary this season has topped $10 million per player and it’s only going to go up from here.
When NBC’s contract with Turner, signed a quarter-century ago, expired, the next six-year deal cost ABC, ESPN and Turner about $4.6 billion. The next seven-year deal cost the networks $7.4 billion.
The current deal, which expires next season, broke those records: nine years, nearly $24 billion.
And now it looks like small change.
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