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The NBA has fired another salvo against a longtime broadcast partner whose impending divorce from the league has spawned a major legal battle.
The NBA on Wednesday filed a brief urging New York Judge Joel M. Cohen to dismiss TBS and Warner Bros. Discovery’s breach of contract lawsuit. The brief responds to a recent filing by the plaintiffs in which they attempt to convince Cohen to deny the NBA’s motion to dismiss.
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The lawsuit revolves around a fundamental question: Did the NBA lawfully determine that TBS failed to match Amazon’s offer to broadcast games from 2025-26 through 2035-36?
The NBA and TBS have offered competing interpretations of contract law, specifically what counts as a “match” and what is better understood as a “counteroffer.”
Through Richard C. Pepperman II and other attorneys from Sullivan & Cromwell as well as NBA executives Richard W. Buchanan and Daniel J. Spillane, the NBA argues that under the “unambiguous terms” of the NBA/TBS contract signed in 2014, TBS “had no right” to match Amazon’s offer to distribute games versus streaming.
The league adds that even if TBS did possess such a right, it failed to successfully invoke it.
“TBS revised eight of the Amazon offer’s 27 sections, changed 11 definitions, struck nearly 300 words, and added over 270 new words,” the NBA wrote. “Plaintiffs’ redline was a counteroffer, not a match. That should be the end of this case.”
To that point, the NBA says that TBS could have matched a term in Amazon’s offer wherein Amazon pledged to promote NBA telecasts during Thursday Night Football. According to the NBA, TBS could have matched that term by simply negotiating advertising deals for Thursday Night Football.
In what the NBA describes as TBS’ counteroffer (TBS calls it a match), TBS inserted a “major sporting league” event, rather than necessarily Thursday Night Football, as an acceptable condition for promoting NBA telecasts. That alteration, the NBA maintains, substantively changed Amazon’s term. “Thursday Night Football” presumably means “Thursday Night Football” rather than NASCAR…
Source link : https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nba-says-tbs-no-match-182200420.html
Author : Sportico
Publish date : 2024-10-04 18:22:00
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