NBA deputy commissioner Mark Tatum appeared on The Domonique Foxworth Show from ESPN this week and described how the league is prioritizing worldwide accessibility and ease of consumption for basketball fans in its media rights negotiations.
The NBA is currently in an exclusive negotiating window with Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery. In the interview with Foxworth, Tatum said he expected the league to come away with “at least” one additional partner in its new setup, which will begin in the 2025-26 season. Tatum also gave insight into the league’s valuation of its global and streaming rights.
“We are actually approaching it as a global negotiation,” Tatum explained. “The vast majority of our revenue comes from the domestic partners, in our case Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney. However, what we did is we actually lined up all of our international media deals to expire coterminous with the expiration of the U.S. deals. So that gives us the opportunity to really go out and provide a global offering to a particular company that’s interested in global rights. So we’re really approaching this as a global media rights negotiation.”
Tatum reiterated that Disney and WBD are interested in renewing within the exclusive window.
“Our incumbents are Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery. They’ve been fantastic partners of ours,” Tatum said. “Given the evolving media landscape, we’re likely to emerge from this window with at least one additional partner. As we think about our approach to this, it really is about accessibility.”
Like commissioner Adam Silver has said repeatedly, Tatum also emphasized the importance of easy access to games, alluding to streaming and other types of content consumption like virtual reality.
“Consumers and fans are watching content and consuming content in a variety of different ways … so we need to make sure that as a sports property, we are delivering that content and delivering content wherever those fans are,” Tatum told Foxworth. “So accessibility is a big part of what we’re trying to do here, discoverability is a big part of what we’re trying to do. Right now, if you’re an NBA fan, it can be really difficult to find where your games are. We need to, in these new partnerships going forward, make it really easy for fans to be able to say, ‘where can I get the game tonight?'”
The best example of global broadcast rights in American sports is Apple’s deal with MLS. It takes a massive corporation with a platform that is accessible worldwide for a league to even consider a global deal like this. Apple TV+ and Amazon’s Prime Video service are two examples, as are Netflix and YouTube. But a regional brand like TNT or even ESPN cannot offer that scope.
Also this week, Bill Simmons predicted a sizable investment from a streamer as part of the NBA’s new package. The reason being that streaming live sports is off to a successful start at Amazon, Peacock and elsewhere. From a league’s standpoint, the insight into audience behavior and demographics is also extremely useful. Simmons also predicted the new package may feature a step back from TNT Sports if WBD cannot bring digital accessibility to the table in the way the NBA wants.
Earlier this month, Tom Friend of Sports Business Journal reported Disney and WBD’s exclusive window expired April 22. Friend predicted a new deal by summer.
More details are coming together on what this new NBA package will look like, but it’s still anyone’s guess exactly who is involved and where hoops fans will go to watch games next year.
