Warner Bros. Discovery thinks it’s entitled to keep some of its hoop dreams.
The company pushed back on the notion that the NBA could keep it out of its next round of rights deals, unveiled Wednesday with new 11-year pacts with Disney, Amazon and NBCUniversal, and said it had a right to stay on the court.
“We have matched the Amazon offer, as we have a contractual right to do, and do not believe the NBA can reject it. In doing so, they are rejecting the many fans who continue to show their unwavering support for our best-in-class coverage, delivered through the full combined reach of WBD’s video-first distribution platforms — including TNT, home to our four-decade partnership with the league, and Max, our leading streaming service,” Warner said in a statement. “We think they have grossly misinterpreted our contractual rights with respect to the 2025-26 season and beyond, and we will take appropriate action. We look forward, however, to another great season of the NBA on TNT and Max including our iconic‘Inside the NBA.’”
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There is a broad expectation that Warner Bros. Discovery will take the NBA to court to assert what it believes are its rights to keep a package that has already been assigned to Amazon. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has been telling associates that a lawsuit is likely, according to people familiar with those discussions.
In doing so, however, Warner will have to grapple with tough optics. For more than three decades, the media company and the league were the closest of partners. Warner even helped manage the NBA’s digital platforms and its NBA cable network. Now, to win back some smaller passel of rights, Warner will have to wage a legal war against a one-time partner that seems eager to move on to new teammates.
Warner executives had hoped to carve out a small “fourth package” of games, presumably carved out of the inventory assigned to ESPN and ABC; Amazon; and NBC and Peacock.
The company has reason to fight. Loss of NBA games will crimp the operations of TNT, its flagship cable operation. Cable and satellite distributors would no doubt see the absence of those games as reason to call for reduction in distribution fees, even though Warner has secured a passel of new rights deals with such properties as the French Open and NASCAR, and signed a deal to show two CFP games that had been assigned to ESPN.
The league and its new trio of partners are moving on as if there is no impediment to their basketball plans. Within minutes of the NBA announcing its new rights plans, Amazon plastered a promotional banner across its homepage: NBA Coming to Prime 2025.”
