Just days after the league told team owners it had finalized new long-term deals valued at $76 billion with Disney’s ESPN, NBCUniversal and Amazon current rights holder Warner Bros. Discovery has exercised its matching rights in a last-ditch effort to keep games on its TNT cable network.
The Wall Street Journal reports Warner didn’t specify whose bid it proposes to match, but people familiar with the situation said the company wants to match Amazon Prime Video’s $1.9 billion per-season offer.
Turner said in a statement Monday that it reviewed offers from other bidders for games in its current rights package and matched one of them. The company called its rights matching provision “an integral part of our current agreement and the rights we have paid for under it.”
The NBA said it had received Warner’s proposal and is reviewing it.
The other deals have much steeper price tags. Disney has a proposed deal to pay about $2.6 billion per-season to keep NBA games on its ESPN and ABC networks while Comcast’s CMCSA -1.37%decrease; red down pointing triangle NBCUniversal has agreed to pay $2.5 billion per-season to put games on its Peacock streaming platform and NBC network. The new deals would take effect starting with the 2025-26 season and run 11 years.
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