NBA media deal reportedly irritates NFL executives

The NBA’s new media deal made a lot of people happy. It also made a few powerful people uncomfortable.

When the league locked in its 11-year, $77 billion rights agreement with ESPN, NBCUniversal, and Amazon Prime Video, the headlines focused on stability, growth, and the return of NBA games to NBC.

Behind the scenes, though, not everyone was applauding.

According to John Ourand of Puck, the reaction inside NFL offices was a little more tense.

“Executives at the NFL are irritated. That deal irritated them,” Ourand said while appearing on a podcast hosted by Andrew Marchand. The issue isn’t the NBA’s success. It’s the optics.

NBC is paying roughly $2.5 billion per year for its NBA package, including Sunday Night Basketball. That number is higher than what the network currently pays annually for Sunday Night Football.

For a league accustomed to being the undisputed financial heavyweight, that matters.

“These are people and personalities,” Ourand said. “It makes the executives at the NFL crazy that that happens.”

The timing is notable. The NFL has opt-outs built into its current media agreements later this decade, and history suggests it won’t hesitate to reset the market if it believes its value isn’t being fully reflected.

As Ourand noted, this isn’t exactly a “live and let live” league.

There’s also a bigger picture forming. With the NBA secured, the NFL entrenched, the Premier League coming back to market, and baseball always looming, networks are juggling massive commitments. Something eventually has to give.

The bottom line is the NBA cashed in. Quietly, though, it may have also poked the bear.