After years of speculation and months of drama — some of which may be just beginning — the NBA has finally announced its new media rights deals.
The NBA announced Wednesday that it has reached 11-year media rights deals with Disney, Comcast and Amazon to distribute games via ESPN/ABC, NBC and Peacock and Prime Video beginning in the 2025-26 season. Under the deal, which runs through the 2035-36 season, the league will ramp up its broadcast television presence and air a regular schedule of games on direct-to-subscriber streaming for the first time, all at the expense of the linear cable bundle to which it had been tethered since the 2002-03 season.
The official announcement Wednesday came within minutes of the NBA saying that it would reject Warner Bros. Discovery’s attempt to match Amazon’s deal.
While much of the details surrounding the deal had already been reported, there is some new information. The ESPN/ABC package of approximately 80 regular season games per year will include at least 20 on ABC, up from the network’s current minimum of 15. ESPN will air a maximum of 60 games, mostly on Wednesday nights, which would be the only NBA games on linear cable.
In addition to retaining exclusive rights to the NBA Finals, ESPN/ABC will now be the exclusive home of the NBA’s five Christmas Day games. While that is not much of a change, TNT aired a Christmas Day game on a few rare occasions under the current, expiring deal. ESPN will also have the ability to develop a new whiparound show featuring live cut-ins, restoring rights that the network had in its original NBA deal from 2002 (the whiparound show — “NBA Fastbreak Tuesday” — aired on ESPN2 for years before being quietly discontinued).
The NBC package will include at least 50 regular season games on NBC, which will air on Tuesday and Sunday nights. The Tuesday night schedule will consist of a split doubleheader in which the Eastern and Central time zones get a game at 8 PM ET and the Mountain and Pacific time zones get one at 11 PM. Both games will be streamed on Peacock, and some markets will occasionally carry the full doubleheader.
NBC will also air Sunday night games following the NFL season, with those beginning at 8 PM ET and preceded by a one-hour pregame show. The NBC networks will carry 28 playoff games in the first two rounds, of which only half are guaranteed to air on NBC. In a shift from what has been the norm, all first round playoff games on the NBC networks — presumably including those airing exclusively on Peacock — will be exclusive to national television.
Between NBC and ABC, the NBA will have approximately 75 regular season games on over-the-air television — up from a minimum of 15 currently.
As for direct-to-subscriber streaming, Peacock will carry 50 exclusive games across the regular season and playoffs, primarily on Mondays. Peacock could air as many as 14 exclusive playoff games, depending on the number carried by NBC.
Prime Video is set to air 66 regular season games on Thursday and Friday nights — including at least one on Black Friday, when it carries the NFL — some Saturday afternoon windows and the quarterfinals, semifinals and championship of the NBA Cup (previously the NBA In-Season-Tournament). Prime also has the full NBA Play-In Tournament and is set to air a third of the first and second round playoff games.
As previously reported, ESPN/ABC will air a conference final in ten of 11 years under the new deal. NBC and Amazon will have six each.
