This game may never start.
The NBA moved Friday to shut down Warner Bros. Discovery’s ambitious legal effort to force the league to revive some portion of its media rights to the corporate. In documents filed within the Supreme Court of the State of Recent York, the NBA sought dismissal of the case, alleging that Warner had the truth is did not match the terms of a package of games which have been earmarked for Amazon‘s Prime Video, detailing in a letter how the corporate, its former longtime sports-media ally, had tried to craft an alternate deal that didn’t the truth is offer the identical things that Amazon did.
Spokespersons for the NBA weren’t capable of respond immediately to queries searching for comment. The NBA said in its filings that it intended to maneuver for dismissal at an October 4 hearing in Recent York City.
“We maintain our position that the NBA’s actions are unjustified, and we strongly consider we now have fulfilled our contractual right to match the third-party offer. Not only is it our contractual right, but it surely is in the most effective interest of the fans who need to proceed to enjoy our industry-leading NBA content with the alternative and adaptability we provide them through our widely distributed platforms including TNT and Max.” Warner Bros. Discovery said in a press release. “We’ll file our opposition in the approaching weeks.”
The NBA in July awarded latest 11-year rights deals to Disney, NBCUniversal and Amazon, rejecting a bid by Warner to remain in its circle of media partners after a relationship that has lasted around three a long time. The brand new pacts go into effect after the following NBA season.
One among the documents filed is a July 24, 2024 letter from William Koenig, the NBA’s head of media distribution to Luis Silberwasser, the president of Warner’s TNT Sports. Within the missive, Koenig says that Warner’s efforts to match Amazon’s package “doesn’t qualify” since the deal hinges on distribution via streaming only and Warner’s bid included each the TNT cable network and the Max streaming service.
“ln its purported match of the Amazon Offer, TBS also modified – and thereby failed to simply accept – quite a few other substantive terms of the Amazon Offer, with each of those changes representing an independent basis for concluding that it has did not make a correct Match,” Koenig said.
Warner Bros. Discovery needs the games — and badly. They’re a critical component of the TNT schedule, generating the live simultaneous audiences that each advertisers and cable distributors crave. Warner earlier this month took a $9.1 billion write down on its cable portfolio, citing the looming lack of the NBA games as one among the principal aspects in its decision.
Koenig also offered details of how Amazon agreed to be certain that the league would by paid, citing “the establishment of a rights fee escrow account, into which the licensee is required to deposit and maintain three seasons of rights fee payments on a rolling basis and from which rights fees would robotically be
disbursed to the NBA on the agreed-upon payment schedule (thereby avoiding the potential for late payments).” Amazon also “committed to keep up a credit standing above investment grade, with the failure to satisfy this commitment giving rise to a termination right in favor of, and a related termination payment to, the NBA.”
Meanwhile, said Koenig, Warner didn’t match those terms, as a substitute offering “to supply the NBA with letters of credit as a substitute type of security,” and would make them accessible provided that it first “did not make a rights fee payment on a timely basis (thereby adding delay before funds might be received by the NBA).”
The NBA executive also noted that Amazon promised to advertise NBA games in its broadest-reaching sports properties, including “Thursday Night Football,” while Warner Bros. Discovery “substituted an
obligation to advertise the NBA in any “Major Sporting League” distributed on TNT or Max, an outlined term which TBS expanded to incorporate NASCAR and certain college sporting events – making this promotional commitment less helpful to the NBA.
Warner has in recent weeks worked to shore up its sports portfolio by acquiring rights to the French Open and a handful of faculty sports. “WBD has been on a sports rights buying spree as of late, securing rights to certain College Football Playoff games, French Open, Big East college basketball, and NASCAR, but we remain cautious that these will likely be enough within the eyes of linear distributors to offset the NBA loss,” said Robert Fishman, an analyst with the independent MoffettNathanson firm, in an early-August research note.
