Warner Bros. Discovery officials are aiming to keep the NBA on TNT and is expected to aggressive in making sure it happens, as relayed by John Ourand of Sports Business Journal.
“We love our relationship with the NBA,” WBD Sports Chair and CEO Luis Silberwasser told Ourand. “We love the business that we have with them, and we look forward to a very bright future.”
NBA broadcasting rights are up for grabs after the 2024-25 season. Other networks and streaming services — such as NBC and Amazon Prime — are expected to contemplate making a run at becoming official broadcast partners.
TNT/Warner Bros. Discovery may have an edge, though, given its longtime relationship with the league.
Interestingly, Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav has gone on record as saying that TNT does not “have to have the NBA.”
Silberwasser seemed to offer a different take.
“I understand the noise out there,” he told Ourand. “But I do hope that people see our commitment to the rights that we have and our commitment to making those rights better than they’ve ever been. If we were not interested in a long-term relationship with the NBA, we wouldn’t be doing the things that we’re doing. When we speak to our league partners, they know it.”
But again, the competition is expected to be stiff.
“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 Michael McCarthy of Front Office Sports.
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