The NBA will hold onto its digital assets, but may bring in an outside company to help run those properties.
For several months, it has been rumored that the NBA would sell off its digital assets, such as NBA TV and NBA.com, to an outside media company, likely Turner or Disney. NBA Commissioner David Stern said as much last November, telling reporters the league was “thinking about expanding the ownership base of our digital assets to include a media company.”
However, the league is not looking to let go of its properties. Stern told Multichannel News recently that the NBA is “not talking about a sale of the assets” but instead “a joint venture where the ownership of the assets would remain with [the NBA], but [a partner] would be responsible for operating them and they would share in the profits based on various benchmarks.”
The league, as has been reported in the past several weeks, is in talks to have Turner Sports “acquire rights to a litany of digital and linear content, including NBA TV and NBA League Pass“, though no new developments have occurred in those talks during the past two weeks. Turner has been the favorite to have some role in operating NBA digital assets since talk of bringing in an outside company began last year.
