Warner Brothers Discovery filed a lawsuit against the NBA on Friday, claiming the US professional basketball league breached a contract by refusing a new media rights deal to accept an offer from Amazon.
The move in New York Supreme Court comes two days after the NBA signed new, 11-year rights deals worth nearly $76 billion with the Walt Disney Company, NBCUniversal and Amazon Prime Video.
Warner Brothers Discovery had announced it had matched Amazon’s offer of $1.8 billion a year — but the NBA rejected the deal, saying its terms didn’t match Amazon’s offer, ending a relationship in American television that started in 1984.
The new deals created long-term NBA coverage on ESPN and ABC, Disney’s NBC and streaming coverage on Amazon, as well as assigning certain global rights to each.
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“Given the NBA’s unjustified rejection of matching a third-party offer, we have taken legal action to enforce our rights,” TNT Sports, a division of Warner Brothers Discovery, said in a statement.
“We strongly believe that this is not only our contractual right, but also in the best interest of fans who want to continue to watch our industry-leading NBA content with the choice and flexibility we offer them through our widely distributed video-first distribution platforms WBD – – including TNT and Max.”
Former NBA star Charles Barkley, one of the hosts of TNT’s popular talk show “Inside the NBA,” released a statement Friday saying money was the deciding factor in TNT’s loss.
“Clearly the NBA wanted to break up with us from the beginning. I’m not sure TNT ever had the chance,” Barkley wrote in a statement released on social media.
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“TNT matched the money, but the league knows Amazon and those tech companies are the only ones willing to pay for the rights when they double in the future. The NBA didn’t want to upset them.
“It’s a sad day when owners and commissioners take money from fans. It’s rubbish.”
TNT will retain NBA coverage rights for the upcoming 2024-25 campaign in the final year of its current deal.
Barkley praised the TNT employees, saying “they deserve better,” and closed by saying, “I also want to thank the NBA and its fans — the best fans in sports. We’re going to give you everything we’ve got next season.”
Source: AFP