NBA

Both Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery are actively in talks with the NBA, and those discussions will continue past April 22, when the exclusive window expires.
Amazon, NBCUniversal, Netflix, YouTube TV and Apple have all expressed preliminary interest in talks with the NBA about potentially buying a package of games as a new partner.

Ten games during the remainder of 2023-24 season will air on WMLW with the debut scheduled for February.

Combined with the Mavericks games already slated to air as part of the NBA on ABC between now and the end of the season, Mavericks’ fans across Dallas-Fort Worth will now have access to 13 free over-the-air games in the span of 11 weeks.

All Friday night games during the remainder of the 2023-24 regular season will be available for free, over the air via Griffin stations in Oklahoma City and Tulsa as well as other regional stations.

The NBA on Wednesday approved Cuban’s sale of a controlling interest in the Mavericks to the Adelson and Dumont families, who run Las Vegas Sands Corp. The deal was approved just shy of a month since Miriam Adelson and Sivan and Patrick Dumont announced their intention to buy the club. The purchase is in the valuation range of $3.5 billion.

A handful of New Orleans Pelicans games could be coming to over-the-air television this season. There are still significant technical hurdles to overcome before a deal can come to fruition. Bally Sports’ financial issues also threaten to alter these plans. Any deal is unlikely to be finalized until mid- to late December. Until that happens, the Pelicans will not be able to decide which of their 10 games will be shown on Gray Television’s WVUE.

Cuban has agreed to sell a majority stake in the NBA franchise to Miriam Adelson, the wife of late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, at a valuation of approximately $3.5 billion. Cuban will retain a minority stake in the team and also still preside over basketball operations. Cuban, who made his fortune selling the website broadcast.com to Yahoo in the late 1990s, bought the team for $285 million in 2000.

The agreement, which was contained in a court filing made Monday, is subject to court approval. Diamond Sports has been in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in the Southern District of Texas since it filed for protection in March. While there will be a reduction in rights payments for some teams, the local rights for 15 franchises will revert back to those teams and the league at the end of this season. The NBA is also on the verge of beginning negotiations for national rights, which expire after the 2024-25 season.

The league’s longtime television partners, including ESPN and Turner, are undergoing major changes, which could alter how games are watched.

The league seeks to boost fees by luring streamers, from Amazon to Apple, and offering games in local markets.

Bankrupt broadcaster Diamond Sports, the nation’s largest regional sports network, has made a take-it-or-leave-it offer to cut rights fees to the NHL and NBA in a last-ditch bid to avoid liquidation. Diamond proposed cutting the fees to both leagues by up to 20% ahead of a bankruptcy court-imposed Sept. 30 deadline, a source with direct knowledge of the situation said Thursday.

KTLA and the L.A. Clippers have announced that they have extended their relationship through the 2024-25 NBA season. KTLA (KTLA 5) will televise 15 games this season, including all four preseason games, and tip off their coverage on Thursday, September 14, with the premiere of Clippers’ Clipboard, a Clippers mini-series that will air during the KTLA 5 morning news.

As the NBA approaches a new season, releasing its 2023-24 schedule earlier this month and rolling out the matchups to watch over the next year, a nettlesome issue continues to hover over the league and half of its teams. Diamond Sports Group, the company that operates 19 Bally Sports regional sports networks across the United States and owns the local television rights for 15 NBA teams, including the Mavericks, Clippers, Cavaliers and Spurs, among others, continues to have its future linger in bankruptcy court. That has caused some uncertainty about how those teams will broadcast their games locally during the upcoming season.

The Disney-controlled channel is trying to find a way forward in the streaming age and has had discussions with the NFL, the NBA and Major League Baseball.

The ecosystem, held together by the pay TV bundle, is showing wear and tear — like the MLB taking over a bankrupt network — as teams and programmers game out what’s next.

Through five months of the NBA season so far — with the start of playoff action looming in four weeks — national TV advertising is 28% higher to an estimated $656.9 million so far, according to iSpot.tv. Total impressions are also comparably higher — 22% more to a total of 29.8 billion — from 136,448 airings of commercials this season.

NBA reportedly re-ups a streaming deal with the league that will keep 16 teams on the DTC service through the 2024-25 season … should it still be around.

The slump in the advertising market didn’t stop Warner Bros. Discovery from selling out its inventory across the NBA’s All-Star Weekend. “We’re sold out,” Jon Diament, executive VP for ad sales at WBD, said. “This is the best year we’ve ever had.” Diament said that in addition to official league sponsors — big names long associated with the NBA like Kia, State Farm and AT&T, this year’s All-Star weekend has 20 new advertisers in the lineup.

Comcast’s NBCUniversal is preparing to make a strong bid to win back National Basketball Association broadcast rights more than 20 years after the company lost them to Disney and Turner Sports, according to people familiar with the matter. NBCU executives have informed the NBA of their interest, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. NBC Sports wants a package that would include playoff games to air on NBC’s broadcast network, two of the people said. Some regular season games could be exclusive to NBCU’s streaming service, Peacock. The NBA could also decide to force media companies to simulcast all games on streaming to increase reach, the people said.

In a major programming addition, Sling TV will now carry ABC-owned stations in eight major cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Unfortunately for Sling Orange tier customers in those markets, who also have access to local NBC and Fox stations, the price of their service is going up another $5 to $45 a month. And the price of the combined Orange/Blue tier is also going up for them by $5 to $60 a month.

Meta says it is expanding its partnership with the NBA and WNBA to launch more than 50 live NBA games in virtual reality on Meta Quest, including five in immersive, 180-degree VR. Those five games will feature celebrity broadcasters Meta said.

The five-game average was up 5% from 2021, managing about 4.27 million viewers (compared to 4.08M viewers from last year), according to Nielsen. The NBA games on ESPN and ABC also generated 3% year-over-year viewership increases in key demos, including people 18-49 and people 25-54.

More than 60 brands will be in the lineup as The Walt Disney Co. presents five National Basketball Association games on ABC and ESPN Christmas Day. State Farm returns as the NBA Christmas Day presenting sponsor for all five games, which will be simulcast on broadcast and cable. NBA player Boban Marjanovic stars in State Farm’s latest commercials and will appear as an announcer in the second quarter of an alternative telecasts of the noon  Philadelphia-New York game hosted by Stephen A. Smith. The Smithcast is presented by Cricket.

Sinclair today has begun taking orders for its Bally Sports+ cord-cutter app in all 19 Bally markets with NBA and NHL teams. However, as expected, MLB teams are available in only five of those markets.

MLB, the NBA and the NHL may orchestrate a buyout of the nation’s dominant owner of regional sports TV networks, whose shaky finances pose an increasing threat to their teams. The trio of pro-sports leagues are expected to soon begin talks with Sinclair Broadcast Group’s Diamond Sports, which operates 21 regional Bally Sports networks that account for more than half the local broadcast markets around the country, sources close to the situation say.

The Nexstar CW affiliate will exclusively air 15 games this season and produce pre-game, halftime, and post-game programming. The broadcasts will be syndicated throughout Southern California.

Last August, Roberts was named ESPN’s senior vice president for NBA and studio production. As the league comes out of the All-Star break and the push toward the playoffs intensifies, Roberts says he is pleased with the early results. Game viewership on ESPN is up 10%, and the new NBA Today studio show has seen a 35% increase.

Sinclair Broadcast Group‘s regional sports network unit Diamond Sports Group has signed a new deal with the National Basketball Association that gives its Bally Sports networks permission to offer streaming content including live games on an authenticated and direct-to-consumer basis.
The deal covers 16 NBA teams in their local territories.