Five Interesting Nuggets From the $10.3B NBA-Turner Contract

When Warner Bros. Discovery sued the NBA on Friday, it released nearly the entire text of their $10.3 billion broadcast contract, signed in October 2014, as part of its complaint.

It’s rare for major league media deals to become the subject of state trial court lawsuits, and it’s equally rare for these 100-page contracts to become public documents. While lawyers will argue over the matching clause, which itself covers nearly 30 pages of the agreement, Sportico found some previously unreported details regarding other aspects of the deal.

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Here are the five things that stood out from the contract, which runs through the 2024-25 NBA season:

Jersey Patches

In April 2016, NBA owners voted to allow teams to sell advertising patches on jerseys. That future was accounted for in this media deal, which includes a clause that obligates certain potential jersey sponsors to buy Turner ad inventory. Should any team sell its jersey patch space to a company that regularly purchases commercials on national NBA broadcasts, the contract says, that company will be “required” to purchase Turner inventory in each game in which the jerseys are worn.

Tickets

The NBA promised Turner 16 tickets for each of the roughly 100 games it televises each year, to be provided by teams, with another four “best remaining” seats available on request per game. That includes pre-season, regular season and playoff games. It’s a minor part of the agreement—two sentences among 100-plus pages—but roughly 1,600 tickets isn’t insignificant. Many league collaborators such as Turner use that kind of access to reward employees as well as their own corporate benefactors.

CNN and TruTV

It’s common for a league’s broadcast deals to include other parts of the media partner’s portfolio. In this contract, Turner agreed to “use its best efforts” to have NBA games promoted on CNN, the politics and news sister network.

The contract also lays out which Turner networks are authorized to carry live games in the deal. They include TNT and TBS, of course, but also any future Spanish-language network in the group’s portfolio and…

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Author : Sportico

Publish date : 2024-07-27 14:00:00

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