The NBA’s blockbuster $76 billion megadeals with Disney, NBCUniversal and Amazon Prime are a testament to its product, and the unrivaled reach and power of live sports. And the deals should also send shivers down the spines of almost everyone in Hollywood outside the network executive suites.
While the 11-year agreements are seen as a critical strategic maneuver by the media companies looking to build streaming business and are a financial boon for the league, they are also, in the words of one veteran media executive who declined to be named, the latest example of a “transfer of wealth from Hollywood to the sports leagues.”
Already, agents and writers are grumbling that the rich deals will mean fewer new TV shows ordered, and fewer reruns, which will result in lower residuals.
NBC’s deal alone will replace more than 150 hours of broadcast TV entertainment with live NBA programming on Sunday and Tuesday nights (not including the playoffs, NBA All Star Weekend or select WNBA games, which will also run on NBC). “When you zoom out and think about the total picture of what we’re trying to do, which is to bring our excellent TV media assets into the future, I think we view the NBA as an excellent piece in that puzzle,” Comcast president Mike Cavanagh told Wall Street analysts July 23, while adding that “it will allow us to rebalance programming from other areas — obviously, we’ll fill a few nights on NBC with this content versus other content.”
That “other content” will be, largely, entertainment programming. NBC’s schedule this year programmed new episodes of The Voice and Night Court on Tuesdays, among other unscripted and scripted shows. Sunday nights after the NFL season ends have been a home for reruns of NBC scripted shows or movie nights.
And at Disney, while most games will remain on ESPN’s platforms (and eventually be available on its flagship ESPN streaming service), ESPN chief Jimmy Pitaro tells The Hollywood Reporter that “for both NBA and WNBA, you will see more games on broadcast.” ABC will broadcast “more than 20” games each season, up from about 15, not including the playoffs or WNBA.
ABC, to be sure, has already broadcast NBA games for years on Saturdays and Sundays, as well as during the playoffs, but the new deal will ramp up the number of games, with other ABC programming likely to be swapped out for live games.
Left out of the new rights deals was Warner Bros. Discovery, which on July 26 filed a lawsuit against the NBA over the league’s decision to sell a package of rights to Amazon Prime Video. The league claimed the David Zaslav-led company’s “proposal did not match the terms” of Amazon’s deal. WBD responded that the NBA “grossly misinterpreted our contractual rights with respect to the 2025-26 season and beyond.”
The NBA deals arrive as the entertainment business is already in a state of contraction. TV networks and streaming services have been rationalizing their budgets, which are either flat or increasingly down, as everyone except Netflix seeks to make unprofitable streaming businesses into something that can actually make money.
Netflix, meanwhile, seems content to keep its content budget more or less flat — but is spending more of it on live events, be it low nine figures for a pair of Christmas NFL games, or $500 million per year on the WWE.
Across the world of entertainment, sports appear to be eating up more of the overall budget. Disney said that it expects to spend $25 billion on content this year, down from $27 billion in 2023. Forty percent of its content budget is dedicated to sports and sports-adjacent programming.
“There’s less money overall, and more of that money is being allocated toward sports,” says Jonathan Miller, a former NBA executive who serves as CEO of Integrated Media, which specializes in digital media investments. “The sports audience is a more or less a guaranteed audience: predictable, you can sell against it, you kind of know where it’s going to fall within ranges.”
The NBA deals will only make the spread between sports and entertainment budgets more obvious. The new deals will see NBCU pay about $2.5 billion per year to the NBA (not including the costs to produce the live games and pre- and post-game shows, known as shoulder programming), while Disney will go from paying $1.4 billion per year under the previous deal to about $2.6 billion under the new deal.
Suffice it to say, few in Hollywood expect either company’s overall content spending to increase by the same margin, even if they do rise slightly. That said, at least for NBC, executives hope the NBA can also bring a jolt to its entertainment lineup. In a memo to NBC staff after the deal was announced, Cavanagh wrote that “the league reaches a broad, diverse and youthful audience that is culturally relevant.”
That could help NBC develop entertainment programming that caters to this younger audience, as opposed to the slightly older demographics typically associated with broadcast TV.
“This new fan base will allow us to create additional entertainment content that will work beyond the basketball season,” Cavanagh wrote. For an example of what Cavanagh is referring to, you could look at the upcoming Peacock scripted series Mr. Throwback, which stars four-time NBA champion Steph Curry.
Disney’s new deal presents a similar situation, with other hours of ABC programming likely to be replaced by NBA and WNBA games, but with opportunities to develop different content also present.
Last year’s Hollywood strikes and the subsequent production shutdowns created something of a reset, with an unintended consequence: They allowed entertainment companies to think about what seems to be working on TV and streaming and what isn’t, and to plan accordingly. “The ratings of an NBA game, which in the past would have been low-rated for primetime — and I’m being kind — are now a perfectly good rating for primetime,” says one high-profile media veteran.
Entertainment viewing has already made the shift to streaming, and sports appears set to follow (there’s a reason that NBC’s Peacock and ESPN’s upcoming direct-to-consumer service are getting such broad rights to the NBA).
“If you look at it from a league point of view today, the two places you can reach new fans — typically younger people — are streaming and broadcast [because it is free and available to all households],” Miller says.
And while the NBA deals will be felt most clearly at ABC and NBC, there are signs that the sports-centric strategy they are embracing will migrate to CBS as well. (Fox has already leaned into sports on broadcast after selling its entertainment assets to Disney.)
Jeff Shell, who is set to be the president of Paramount when Skydance completes its merger deal next year, told reporters on a press call, “I think if there’s going to be a change for CBS, it’s going to be that we’re going to probably manage it a bit more aggressively for cash flow, meaning making some harder decisions on time periods and things like that going forward, which you have to when you have a declining business.” He added that CBS has a “foundation of sports,” which it uses to help the scripted fare it does have.
If CBS does change things up, it certainly won’t be cutting back on NFL or March Madness games.
The NBA deals come at a pivot point for the TV business, with all eyes looking toward a streaming future, but one foot firmly planted in broadcasting’s past. Every company — and, for that matter, every league — is figuring out what that future looks like.
“It’s not like they’re creating new money,” one executive says of the traditional entertainment companies. “In fact, even for NBC, there’s less money because the retransmission fees are going down, their audience is going down.”
The future of entertainment may be in streaming, but broadcast is the home of its lucrative present. At least in the near term, the blockbuster sports deals will mean fewer hours of entertainment programming on broadcast TV, and Hollywood will feel the pinch.
Those TV rights deal details…
The “A” Package — Disney
Value: $2.6 billion per year
What they get:
•ABC will get exclusive rights to NBA Finals.
•80 regular season games on ESPN and ABC.
•18 playoff games from first two rounds, plus conference finals games.
•NBA Draft.
•Streaming rights, including ability to put all games on upcoming “flagship” streaming service, and select games on Disney+ domestically and internationally.
•WNBA games, including regular season, playoffs, and All Star Game.
•Partnerships with Marvel Studios and Walt Disney World.
How they’re selling it: ESPN chief Jimmy Pitaro says “through this premium collection of rights, including every NBA Finals on our platforms, we will continue to evolve together while successfully navigating the global digital transition.”
The “B” Package — NBC Universal
Value: $2.5 billion per year.
What they get:
•100 regular season games on NBA and Peacock, regionalized to East and West coasts.
•28 playoff games in first two rounds, plus conference finals games.
•Opening night doubleheader, plus MLK Day games.
•NBA All Star Weekend rights, including All Star Game.
•Rights to games in Europe for Sky Sports, and in Spanish for Telemundo Deportes.
•USA Basketball games in lead up to Olympics.
•WNBA games, including regular season and playoffs.
How they’re selling it: Comcast president Mike Cavanaugh touted the deal as a “a testament to our tremendous reach across broadcast and streaming.” Plus, John Tesh’s iconic 90s era “Roundball Rock” anthem is back, too.
The “C” Package — Amazon Prime Video
Value: $1.8 billion per year.
What they get:
•66 regular season games.
•Playoff games, including some conference finals games.
•Quarterfinals, semifinals and championship game for the Emirates NBA Cup (the in-season tournament).
•NBA Play-In tournament games.
•Black Friday game.
•International rights in some territories, including 20 additional games and the NBA aFinals in some territories.
•WNBA games, including regular season and playoffs.
•Amazon becomes strategic partner and distributor of NBA League Pass.
How they’re selling it: Amazon exec Mike Hopkins says “We look forward to continuing to innovate and evolve live sports coverage for our customers,” much as Prime Video did for the NFL with Thursday Night Football and its Black Friday game.
The “Filed a Lawsuit” Package — Warner Bros. Discovery
What they had:
•Currently TNT Sports televises 64 regular season games, plus playoff games.
•Produces Inside the NBA, widely regarded as the best NBA studio show – if not the best sports studio show – on TV.
•Was unable to reach deal with NBA during exclusive window, attempted to to exercise matching rights with Amazon’s deal.
•NBA says WBD’s “proposal did not match the terms” of Amazon’s deal. WBD responded that the NBA “grossly misinterpreted our contractual rights with respect to the 2025-26 season.”
What’s next: Well, they’re suing to secure the rights or extract a settlement. CEO David Zaslav has been quiet since the deals were signed, but said on the company’s last earnings call that they have “had a lot of time to prepare for this negotiation, and we have strategies in place for the various potential outcomes.” Now the company has taken action after the NBA dismissed its matching offer.
This story appeared in the July 31 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.