The Charlotte Hornets are moving every non-nationally televised game this season onto free, over-the-air television.
The team and Cox Media Group announced Wednesday that WSOC Channel 9 and its sister station TV64 will serve as the exclusive local home for Hornets basketball beginning when the season tips off in October. Per the announcement, the deal also includes pregame and postgame coverage, interviews, and additional Hornets-specific programming around each broadcast, though the exact schedule for which games air on which station hasn’t been released yet.
Sports Business Journal’s Tom Friend reports that DAZN will likely end up handling Charlotte’s game streams, while paying the Hornets a minimum annual guarantee in the $1-$2 million range. But putting every non-national game on over-the-air television with Cox, in a deal that reportedly carries a rights fee in the $7-$8 million range annually, was an organizational effort to be fan-friendly, per SBJ.
According to a separate report by SBJ’s Austin Karp, DAZN “is close to acquiring full exclusive broadcast rights next season” for five teams formerly under contract with Main Street Sports Group, owner of the now-defunct FanDuel Sports Networks. Those teams are the Minnesota Timberwolves, Cleveland Cavaliers, Indiana Pacers, San Antonio Spurs, and Memphis Grizzlies. Additionally, Karp reported that DAZN was close to securing streaming-only arrangements with the Orlando Magic and “possibly” the Charlotte Hornets, alongside a separate deal to take over the Gotham Sports app, the joint YES Network-MSG venture that currently sells access for seven New York-area teams, including the Yankees, Knicks, Nets, Rangers, Islanders, Devils, and Sabres.
With Wednesday’s news, the Hornets became the fifth former FanDuel team to move its local broadcasts onto an over-the-air affiliate, following deals struck in recent weeks by the Detroit Pistons, Miami Heat, Milwaukee Bucks, and Atlanta Hawks. Meanwhile, the T-Wolves and four other teams in Karp’s initial report are taking the approach of going fully exclusive with the streamer and bypassing over-the-air TV altogether, while Charlotte’s arrangement, splitting local rights between Cox for broadcast and DAZN for streaming, looks like where the rest of the league not already locked into one of the two camps is likely headed.
With the NBA looking to launch a centralized local streaming hub ahead of the 2027-28 season as a longer-term fix, teams like Charlotte are signing deals that are either one season in length or have mutual opt-out clauses following the upcoming season as teams demand the flexibility to join the league’s aggregated local rights solution when it launches. For now, the Hornets are betting on the same local-broadcast model that’s already taken hold in several other NBA markets.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.