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.
A chunk of the Golden State Warriors, the National Basketball Association’s most successful team over the past decade, is up for sale, according to people familiar with the matter. A group of minority investors accounting for just over 10% are looking to offload their stake, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information.
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.
Exclusives
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.
The National Basketball Association and Sony’s Hawk-Eye Innovations, a provider of officiating and tracking technology in sports, have formed a multi-year partnership, beginning with the 2023-24 season, to deploy Hawk-Eye’s […]
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.
LeBron James is on pace to break Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s scoring record next Tuesday at home against the Oklahoma City Thunder. That game will now be shown on TNT, a change that forced a reworking of that night’s entire schedule on the network. TNT was supposed to show Atlanta at New Orleans, followed by Minnesota at Denver. Instead, it’ll show Phoenix at Brooklyn first, followed by the Thunder-Lakers game.
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.
NBC Sports Chicago and PointsBet are again partnering to present a series of BetCast presentations of Chicago Bulls games during the 2022-23 NBA Regular Season, expanding the collaboration that launched the alternate […]
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.
TV Sports Advertising Shifts Into Juggernaut Mode
By all measures, sports advertising is dominating ads in all other types of programming, walloping the competition in primetime. All indications are it only has more to grow.
In 2020, the NBA and the NHL were the most assertive major American sports leagues in their efforts to contain the impact of COVID on their seasons. Both leagues employed “bubbles” that sequestered players and employed aggressive testing regimens to continue their seasons. About a year-and-a-half later, their paths have diverged. On Tuesday, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said the league has “no plans” to halt games, despite the lightning-quick spread of the Omicon variant.
National Basketball Association broadcasting legend Marv Albert signed off for the final time on July 4, his final words a simple “good night” to his legion of fans. Albert, whose 55-year-career was punctuated by his trademark “Yes!” call when someone made a crucial jump shot, finished his career with TNT, as the Milwaukee Bucks defeated the Atlanta Hawks in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals.
After making it through the three-month Orlando bubble without a single case of COVID-19, the NBA couldn’t make it through two days of its out-of-the-bubble 2020-21 season before the virus wreaked havoc. The league announced that Wednesday’s game between the Houston Rockets and Oklahoma City Thunder has been postponed due to health and safety protocols.
The NBA’s board of governors and players’ association will hold separate meetings on Thursday expected to culminate with an agreement on starting the 2020-21 season on Dec. 22 and playing a reduced 72-game schedule, sources tell ESPN.
New remote production techniques, distributed workflows and onsite safety protocols have dramatically reshaped sports production. As COVID-19 continues to be a threat, sports producers can expect less travel, trucks staying in place and a slowdown of UHD production until the crisis abates.
Post- and end-of-the-season action for TV sports franchises has seen sharply lower overall viewership as a result of sports competition caused by disruptions in scheduling due to COVID-19, as well as lower persons using television (PUT) data. MoffettNathanson Research says the returning NBA and NHL have been impacted by lower PUT data in August and September versus the April and May periods — the former period being one that traditionally sees lower PUT data.
In a joint statement released Friday, the league and the players association said they would immediately establish a social justice coalition, made up of players, coaches and owners, that would focus on issues such as voting access and advocating for meaningful police and criminal justice reform.
