Given its success with Thursday Night Football Amazon very well could make a bid to become a streaming partner to the NBA during the next round of media negotiations, according to Michael McCarthy of Market Watch.
The NBA is expected to seek in the neighborhood of $75 billion for its next media rights package, per multiple reports, and Amazon and others could indeed become a player.
“I would say that all of the leading technology companies are interested in the NBA. Amazon is just one of them. I think Apple, I think Google. All of them,” former NBA and ESPN executive John Kosner said, via McCarthy in a post for Front Office Sports.
“And keep in mind the definition of what’s a ‘rights package’ going forward doesn’t have to be what we grew up with. A company like Discord (a social platform with 150 million monthly users) could become an NBA rights holder at some point, too. I think they’re all interested.”
NBA games are already streamed by Tencent Holdings in China.
“The last thing we want is to disenfranchise fans who are not watching TV in a traditional manner and therefore can’t see our games,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said at All-Star Weekend in Cleveland last season.
The next NBA media rights package will begin in the 2025-26 season. NBA broadcast rights are currently held by ESPN/ABC and TNT.
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