TNT on the Clock as NBA Board of Governors Approves Media Deals

The NBA on Tuesday night took the next significant step toward securing its new round of media-rights deals, as the league’s Board of Governors voted to approve the offers from Disney, Comcast and Amazon.

Speaking to the press in Las Vegas shortly after 7 p.m. local time, NBA commissioner Adam Silver confirmed that the league owners had signed off on the papered bids, which together amount to an 11-year, $75.9 billion juggernaut. But beyond the revelation that the board has voted to accept the offers, Silver wasn’t at liberty to add much in the way of detail.

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This, of course, has to do with the possibility that Warner Bros. Discovery, the NBA’s longest-serving TV distributor, may choose to take legal action that might delay or otherwise derail the deal. In a show of caution and not just a little deference to the league’s 40-year partnership with TNT, Silver did not explicitly name any of the incoming or outgoing suitors.

“I know there’s a lot of interest in our new media deals,” Silver said before fielding questions from the media. “This is still an ongoing process. There was discussion of those at our board today and we did approve this stage of those media proposals, but as you all know, there are other rights that need to be worked through with existing partners.”

When asked if Warner Bros. Discovery’s five-day window in which to make a matching bid had commenced, Silver apologized before going on to say, “I can’t get into the machinations yet about how those contracts work.”

It is believed that the NBA plans to send the contracts to WBD on Wednesday, whereupon the five-day countdown will officially begin.

While the commish was necessarily stingy with the details, Silver did allow that he believes the new deals will satisfy all the goals the league set before negotiations began with the incumbents on March 9. Naturally, boosting media revenues was a key objective for the league and its owners, but choosing viable distribution platforms was also of primary importance.

“I think part of [our objective] was to get additional broadcast exposure, and hopefully we will…


Source link : https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tnt-clock-nba-board-governors-122032269.html

Author : Sportico

Publish date : 2024-07-17 12:20:32

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