Warner Bros. Discovery is ready to call foul on the NBA.
If the shrinking media giant has its way, athletes, influencers and others will begin to take to social media and other venues to criticize the NBA and Amazon for a new deal that will have the digital titan’s Prime Video stream dozens of professional basketball games starting in the 2025-2026 season.
Warner Bros. Discovery is working with Edelman, an independent public-relations firm, to wage a campaign that aims to cast aspersions on Amazon getting a $1.8 billion-per-year package of NBA rights that Warner believes should stay under its aegis. The two parties have been working together for the past year on corporate-strategy initiatives, according to people familiar with the matter.
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Under the current effort, Edelman will seek to line up athletes, executives and other luminaries to criticize the NBA’s decision, part of a broader allocation of media rights that also awarded games to Walt Disney and NBCUniversal in an 11-year pact that will commence after the next Nbaseason, which will be Warner’s last. Edelman also plans to raise questions about what the move of the NBA games to Amazon will do to the fan experience.
The public-relations firm has made outreach to former NBA players, civil rights leaders and others, according to people who have seen texts and messages, hoping to press them to make the case that moving NBA games to Amazon will impinge on minority audiences’ ability to watch — an argument that may have flaws, given the sheer number of consumers who are cutting expensive cable subscriptions in favor of pared-down streaming relationships. According to one set of calculations, watching a season of NBA games via cable would require an outlay of about $1,000 a year, or about $83 per month.
Warner Bros. Discovery could not be reached for immediate comment about the Edelman hire, nor could an Edelman representative. The Wall Street Journal previously reported on the Edelman hire. The company in the past has represented big marketers like Unilever’s Hellmann’s and Yum Brands’ Taco Bell, and has been the subject of protest by climate activists who did not like its ties to oil companies.
Edelman is likely to make the case that moving the NBA games that have been on TNT for years will making things more complex for consumers, who have grown accustomed to watching Warner’s NBA telecasts and its “Inside the NBA” studio show.
Warner is no doubt hoping to ramp up pressure on the basketball league as it also works to make its case in court. Warner on Friday filed a suit against theNBAin the Supreme Court in the State of New York alleging the NBA breached terms of a contract that gives Warner the right to match the terms of any offer that would move games to a competitor. Warner sought earlier this week to match Amazon’s offer, but it is clear the media company and the sports league differ on Warner’s ability to match the abilities of a major streaming operation with its cable network and Max broadband hub.
Charles Barkley, perhaps the most popular and outspoken member of that program, took to Instagram Friday to express his dismay at the fracas between Warner and the NBA. “TNT matched the money, but the league knows Amazon and these tech companies are the only ones willing to pay for the rights when they double in the future,” Barkley said. “The NBA didn’t want to piss them off.”
Still. Barkley has not seemed thrilled by Warner’s handling of the situation. He told The Athletic Friday that he felt Warner should not have sued, and in recent weeks has been critical of Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav. Barkley has indicated he plans to retire from “Inside the NBA” after next season, though he acknowledged to The Athletic that he is owned money from a contract with Warner and that he would consider taking jobs with rival media companies if he is not paid.
Warner’s public image and outreach are being supervised by a new executive. Warner Bros. Discovery in June named Robert Gibbs, a former spokesperson for the Obama White House, as its chief communications and public affairs officer.
