One of the biggest dramas on TV isn’t expected to launch formally until later in 2025, but it’s already playing out off camera at four of the biggest media companies in the nation.
When the NBA bounces later this year from Warner Bros. Discovery’s TNT cable network to NBCUniversal’s NBC and Peacock and Amazon’s Prime Video, the league will spark perhaps the biggest transfer of audience and advertising dollars in the history of the medium since CBS lost a decades-old contract with the NFL to Fox in 1993. Viewership shifts caused by that move, including the loss of affiliates, still pressure CBS today. Warner could be in similar straits: The company is projected to lose $1.1 billion in TV advertising in 2026, approximately 23% of its total this year, according to Robert Fishman, an analyst with MoffettNathanson, due in large part to the absence of the NBA on its networks for the first time since 1989.
NBA rightsholders, new and old alike, see massive opportunities. Disney, which is staying in business with the NBA even as it sheds some of the games it previously showed, is seen capturing $1.25 billion in annual ad revenue from NBA games, according to Fishman, thanks to its hold over the NBA Finals. NBC could take in $1 billion or more, the analyst has projected, while Amazon might win $750 million. In all, there will be 75 NBA games shown across broadcast TV under the new deal, compared with 15 in the most recent media agreement.
The money is crucial. All three companies are shelling out massive amounts for the new rights deals, which will extend from late 2025 until the 2035-2036 season. NBC is estimated to be paying more to the NBA for its new package — $2.5 billion a year — than it does to the NFL for “Sunday Night Football.” Disney is seen paying the NBA $2.6 billion per year, while Amazon is expected to pay $1.8 billion.
“There is a mad dash to find talent, build production infrastructure and staff up,” says Josh Pyatt, who co-leads the sports practice at the large talent agency WME.
Some of the new NBA players aren’t waiting to secure their cash. Both Amazon and NBC have already signed ad deals for next season, according to media buyers and other executives familiar with the current market. Disney, these people said, has not been as aggressive so far, but the company doesn’t have to rush. It’s already sold out the ad time tied to its current NBA season, says Jim Minnich, senior vice president of revenue and yield management for the company’s ad-sales unit, during a recent interview. “We are the incumbent,” he says, and advertisers can look back at two decades’ worth of NBA viewership data across ESPN and ABC, making for easier negotiations than with NBC or Amazon. “We are extremely confident in our position.”
The scramble to win new basketball dollars shows just how heavily big media companies are leaning on sports to fuel their business. Scripted TV shows were once the coin of the realm, but as more people watch their favorite series at times of their own choosing, the big crowds that TV advertisers still crave have become harder to assemble.
Sports can still do that trick. Little wonder that NBC, backed by parent company Comcast, quietly negotiated with the International Olympic Committee to add another four-year term — valued at $3 billion — to its current cycle of U.S. rights for the Winter and Summer extravaganzas. Even media companies not known for their sports offerings are trying to get on the field. A+E Global Media, the joint venture of Disney and Hearst, has pitched documentaries from its History Channel as a sports complement, a way for advertisers to reach male viewers who aren’t into games.
The NBA has hopes of making a bigger name for itself — maybe even like the NFL has. Under the new deal, the league will have more games on broadcast TV, just like its football contemporary. Games on Amazon and Peacock, meanwhile, are bound to reach what is arguably the next generation of sports fan, the kind that doesn’t subscribe to old-school cable. What’s more, Warner’s “Inside the NBA,” the popular show led by Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal and others, will turn up on Disney’s ESPN.
The chase for ad dollars to support basketball could be the defining dynamic of this year’s upfront market, when TV networks try to sell the bulk of their commercial inventory for the next season. Sports typically sell separately from entertainment, but with fewer linear impressions to be wrung out of views of first-run episodes of “Law & Order: SVU” or “Abbott Elementary,” more sponsors that once didn’t use sports to get commercials in front of consumers are moving full-bore into the format.
The NBA is poised to play a sizable role in this year’s haggling. “The NBA has fundamentally changed the marketplace with their new rights deal,” says one media buying executive. With three different companies holding rights contracts, this buyer adds, “they have brought more competition into the marketplace.”
Amazon and NBC are trying to lasso dollars by tying the NBA to other big sports properties already under their tents. NBC is already in talks with advertisers about linking commercials across the next NBA season, its 2026 telecast of Super Bowl LX, next year’s Winter Olympics and the next FIFA World Cup. NBC is touting the “biggest events of the year and how they can all speak to each other,” says Peter Lazarus, executive vice president of sports ad-sales for NBCUniversal.
Meanwhile, Amazon intends to incorporate an NBA game with its emerging “Black Friday” franchise, which already uses an NFL game to drive ad deals aimed at consumers who are thinking about holiday gift-giving. Adding the NBA makes Amazon a bigger presence in sports media, says Danielle Carney, head of live sports and video sales for Amazon, since it already has NASCAR rights and the NFL’s “Thursday Night Football” under its umbrella. “We are driving about 90% of our partnerships based off of live sports events,” she says.
Warner Bros. Discovery still has hopes of keeping some of its basketball money. “We will still be in the NBA business,” says Jon Diament, the executive vice president at Warner Bros. Discovery who oversees sports ad sales.
How? Well, Warner was able to strike a deal with the NBA for use of digital clips on its Bleacher Report sports site and its popular House of Highlights video-clip service. Maintaining Warner’s partnership status with the NBA, says Diament, means being able to give advertisers access to the type of content that gets passed around social media. “That means miking up players, that means being in the tunnel and going through what kind of sneaker and what they’re wearing before they walk into the game. This is very real and organic, great content,” he says. “And hits the younger fans 18 to 34, too”
Warner is also betting that it can use the money it once allocated to the NBA to other sports properties that will keep advertisers on board. These deals, says Diament, will give the company more sports around the calendar, not just during NBA season. Warner has a growing interest “in having college be a more prominent part of our portfolio,” says Luis Silberwasser, chairman and CEO of Warner’s TNT Sports, in remarks made last week ahead of the start of the NCAA March Madness men’s basketball tournament that Warner broadcasts with CBS. “We are just getting started with this.”
No company is revamping itself for sports like NBCU, which will soon have three nights of basketball: Sunday- and Tuesday-night games on its flagship broadcast network and Monday matches streaming on Peacock. That means NBC may bank less on scripted shows and more on sports, with Sunday nights devoted to NFL or NBA from September to May. The company has telegraphed its new direction for months, making nips and cuts to its late-night schedule — Seth Meyers’ “Late Night” band, and Jimmy Fallon’s Friday night “Tonight Show” broadcast are both casualties — and placing growing emphasis on game shows and other types of reality fare.
Delivering TV’s biggest audiences is the goal, says Lazarus. “We have a lot of sports, but our mass rating points live in the fourth quarter,” he says. With the NBA, NBC will have big-audience properties throughout the season and can use them to promote other programming and series. The network thinks it can add a new boost to the basketball viewing experience, he adds. “We think the current players, the current broadcasts have gotten away” from having a kinetic, in-the-arena feel, he says. “Producers are trying to make every game more of an event, as opposed to making every game the same. We are going to bring rivalries between players back, rivalries between teams.”
The NBA’s three TV partners may face a different sort of battle in weeks to come. Can Disney, Amazon and NBC make the case that the broader audiences they expect to generate over Warner’s cable properties are worth more money?
“We don’t believe that we should be paying premiums for any sport just because the media partner had to put out for rights,” says Jimmy Spano, executive vice president of sports for Dentsu Media, in an interview. “We go based off the performance of the sport.”
NBA ratings have slipped slightly in the current season, though Disney’s viewership is up in recent weeks. and the league’s February All-Star Game was the second least-watched event of its sort. Viewership was off 13% on Warner’s outlets compared to 2023’s outing. The addition of dozens of games for broadcast TV increases supply in the market at a time when demand for linear TV is waning — a problem the NFL has faced in the recent past.
Both NBC and Amazon have appeared willing to make deals, according to buyers familiar with recent negotiations. These executives said Amazon hasn’t taken the pugnacious stance it did when it first tried to line up ad support for “Thursday Night Football.” At the time, the company pushed potential sponsors to match the prices they were paying for highly rated Sunday-afternoon games on Fox. The tone, so far at least, is “aggressive, not egregious,” says one buyer.
“We moved to the market early as a new owner of the property, and it has been well received,” says Lazarus. “We are pacing ahead of where we thought.” He believes advertisers will pay more for the broader reach of NBC.
There are plenty of enticements at the ready. Amazon is building a new studio in California for programs and is talking to sponsors about how they might be incorporated, says Carney. And Disney will offer ways to tie into its new telecasts of “Inside the NBA,” says Minnich, though it is “still developing” strategies.
All the companies will have to hope it won’t take Charles Barkley to pry dollars from Madison Avenue’s purses. There are only a few personalities like him, after all, but dozens of games left to sell.
