NBC Sports hopes to bid aggressively for NBA

Cue up John Tesh’s “Round Soccer” – “NBA on NBC” could be back, if NBC Sports succeeds.

ComcastNBCUniversal is preparing an aggressive bid to win back the National Basketball Association’s broadcasting rights more than 20 years after the company lost the broadcasting rights. Disney and Turner Sports, according to people familiar with the matter.

NBCUniversal executives informed the NBA of their interest, the people who requested anonymity said because the discussions were private. NBC Sports wanted a package that included knockout matches to be broadcast on NBC’s broadcast network, two of these people said. Some regular season games may be exclusive to NBCUniversal’s streaming service, Peacock. People said the NBA could also decide to force media companies to broadcast all games online to increase reach.

Apple And Amazon People familiar with the matter said they have also expressed interest in the NBA in purchasing extreme streaming packages. Amazon currently has an agreement with the NBA that allows them to stream games in Brazil.

No formal discussions may take place with non-incumbent contractors unless Discovery of Warner Bros., the company that owns Turner Sports, and Disney agreed to waive their exclusive negotiation period, which will end in April 2024, according to people familiar with the matter. Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery owns the NBA rights until the end of the 2024-2025 season — more than two years from now. It is possible that the NBA simply reunited with both existing parties and never opened negotiations with outside contractors. that is what happened in 2014, the most recent renewal of the league.

An NBA spokesperson confirmed that there are no negotiations taking place with NBCUniversal at this time regarding national rights while adding that the league has had a “longstanding relationship with Comcast/NBA as a former NBA national television rights holder and through many of our teams’ partnerships with the NBC Sports regional sports network.”

But that’s not likely to happen this time because Streaming has taken over people said this is the main distribution method of watching TV. The NBA is likely to come up with a new package or two for contractors, pushing their media rights partners from two to three or four, two people said.

Disney is expected to bid on a package of rights to ESPN, ESPN+ and ABC, the people said.

Warner Bros. concerns. Discovery for the NBA is increasingly quiet. CEO David Zaslav said in November, “We don’t have to have the NBA.” Turner’s relationship with the league features the long-running studio show “Inside the NBA,” hosted by Ernie Johnson and former NBA stars Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith and Shaquille O’Neal. The sports head of Zaslav and Warner Bros. Discovery, Luis Silberwasser, will likely use this year to decide what kind of future relationship it wants with the NBA, according to a person familiar with their thinking.

Spokespersons for NBCUniversal, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Amazon declined to comment. An Apple spokesperson could not be immediately reached for comment.

“What you have today are programmers selling us content at increasingly higher prices and asking us to distribute that content to the majority of our customers, and at the same time, sell the content itself. that for streaming platforms or direct-to-consumer creation, Chris Winfrey, CEO of Charter, the second-largest U.S. cable provider, said in comments posted by CNBC last week. “Our willingness to continue funding programmers when that content is freely available elsewhere is decreasing. That means in a linear video structure you’ll see more and more developers. distribution decides that it is no longer reasonable to carry certain content.”

Warner Bros. Discovery could take on a larger global streaming service — HBO Max/Discovery+ combined (capable of being called Max) — to be released later this year. Warner Bros. Discovery ended September with about 95 million streaming subscribersbeyond Peacock 20 million, for the United States only. NBA has partnered with Turner Sports for almost 40 years.

Many NBA fans fondly remember “NBA on NBC” for its drama.”round shuttlecock‘ theme songs and erased broadcasts of the Chicago Bulls team led by Michael Jordan that won six titles in the 1990s. NBC aired their last NBA games in games. finals in 2002, when the Los Angeles Lakers wiped out the New Jersey Nets.Games have been split between Disney’s ESPN and ABC and Turner Sports’ TNT and TBS over the past two decades.ABC broadcasts the NBA Finals.

NBA offers valuable live programming for advertisers and regular orders millions of viewers. Regular seasonal NBA games on ABC, ESPN and TNT averaged 1.6 million viewers this season. That’s unchanged from a year ago, even as the total number of US households subscribing to cable TV has dropped from 70 million to 62 million, according to NBA data.

NBA rights are about to be renewed while global media companies are cutting costs, which could pressure the federation to lower expectations on the scale of price increases. Warner Bros. Discovery laid off thousands of employees and cut billions of dollars in content costs last year. Disney announced last week it plans to eliminate 7,000 jobs and cut costs by $5.5 billion, including $3 billion in savings on non-sports content. NFL gain 40% to 80% increase for its media rights when it renews the agreement for 11 years in 2021.

It’s too early to say how much revenue the NBA will be able to raise from its new TV contract, but early hints of a 200% increase from about $25 billion to over $70 billion in 9 years perhaps over-optimistic, according to people familiar with the matter. Two of these people said a year-over-year increase of close to 100% may be more likely, given the continued decline of the streaming and pay-TV businesses that are still losing billions of dollars. la every year.

WATCH: CNBC’s full interview with the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, David Zaslav

Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.