The National Basketball Association is seeking to double the
TV-rights fees it receives from ESPN majority owner Walt Disney Co. and Time Warner Inc. 's Turner Broadcasting,
as the league looks to lock up deals for nationally televised games in the
coming months, according to people familiar with the matter, according to TheWall Street Journal.
Disney and Turner have eight-year contracts in place that
run through the 2015-2016 season, but the companies are already in preliminary
discussions with the league about extending their deals. Disney is currently
paying about $485 million a year, while Turner's deal is worth $445 million a
year. Given those terms, doubling the payments implies the new deals would be worth
a total of nearly $15 billion for the NBA, assuming the length of the new deals
remains eight years.
NBA team owners are meeting Tuesday to discuss TV-rights
deals and other matters.
Under terms of the existing deals, the NBA cannot yet
negotiate with other companies. If the league can't reach deals with Disney and
Time Warner, it could open up a bidding process.
League owners and industry analysts are expecting a huge fee
increase in the new deal. In recent years, the National Football League and
Major League Baseball have cut media deals that are substantially more
expensive than the contracts they replaced—in the case of MLB, more than twice
as much.
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