The NBA’s $77B Deals With Amazon, NBCU and Disney Solidify Sports’ Migration to Streaming
Live sports have become increasingly fragmented across streaming platforms in recent years.
The NBA yesterday (July 24) inked new 11-year media rights deals with Amazon (AMZN), NBCUniversal and The Walt Disney Company (DIS) that are worth around $77 billion in total and will begin during the 2025-2026 season. Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), meanwhile, will no longer carry the league after a nearly 40-year history of broadcasting the NBA on its channel TNT. The move will help solidify the migration of sports to streaming platforms, with national games set to be available across streaming services like Amazon’s Prime Video, NBCU’s Peacock and a forthcoming service from Disney’s ESPN.
Sports viewership has become increasingly fragmented across streamers in recent years as players like YouTube, Netflix (NFLX) and Apple (AAPL) TV+ embrace live sports in a bid to boost revenue. The NBA’s new media agreements “will maximize the reach and accessibility” of the league’s games, said Adam Silver, NBA Commissioner, in a statement, adding that “these partners will distribute our content across a wide range of platforms and help transform the fan experience over the next decade.” The NBA said it did not renew its partnership with WBD because the media company could not match the terms of Amazon’s offer. In a statement, TNT said it did match the offer and “will take appropriate action.”
Streaming is a heavy component of the new deals. Prime Video will have access to 66 regular-season NBA games annually and stream one of the two Conference Finals series in six of the 11 years on a rotating basis with NBCU. NBC and Peacock will be home to 100 NBA games during the regular season, with Peacock exclusively streaming around 50 regular-season and postseason games each year.
Disney will distribute 80 regular-season NBA games, with over 20 on ABC and up to 60 on ESPN, and remain the exclusive home of the NBA finals. All NBA games and events hosted on ABC and ESPN will be available on ESPN’s forthcoming direct-to-consumer streaming service, which is expected to launch next year.
The rise of live sports on streaming
As viewership declines across cable television, sports leagues are turning to various streamers to distribute their content. Prime Video, for example, began a 10-year partnership with the NFL to stream Thursday Night Football games in 2023. YouTube last year paid $14 billion for a seven-year contract for the NFL’s Sunday Ticket package. Apple TV+ has partnerships with both the MLB and MLS, and Netflix recently struck a deal to show two Christmas NFL games in 2024.
With leagues turning to numerous different streamers, some say the sports streaming market is becoming too disconnected. “The biggest problem we’re having in the market is just the confusion and fragmentation,” Dan Rayburn, a streaming media analyst, told Observer. The proliferation of content across platforms can cause frustration for fans previously used to cable who need help with how to follow a particular team. “In the case of something like Friday Night Baseball at Apple TV+, try going to any bar or restaurant where you live and have them turn on the local game—the bars don’t know what Apple TV+ is,” said Rayburn.
Despite the fragmentation, it appears that streamers will be staying on lucrative sports deals for a while. Eddy Cue, who oversees Apple TV+, described sports as “the greatest unscripted drama there is” in a 2023 interview with GQ. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told CNBC earlier this year that “sports are very attractive to our customers.” During Netflix’s recent earnings call, co-CEO Ted Sarandos praised the company’s foray into live and event-focused programming and said, “We’re in live because our members love it; it drives a ton of engagement and it drives a ton of excitement.”