As expected, billable hours might be a giant winner in the brand new NBA rights deal.
Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), the parent company of TNT, has sued the NBA over an identical rights clause within the previous TV contract, because the league has signaled it should end its decades-long partnership with TNT.
The lawsuit was filed on Friday in Recent York County Supreme Court, with WBD being represented by the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges.
“Given the NBA’s unjustified rejection of our matching of a third-party offer, we now have taken legal motion to implement our rights,” TNT Sports said in an announcement.
“We strongly consider this isn’t just our contractual right, but additionally in the perfect interest of fans who need to keep watching our industry-leading NBA content with the alternative and adaptability we provide them through our widely distributed WBD video-first distribution platforms – including TNT and Max.”
The NBA disagrees.
“Warner Bros. Discovery’s claims are without merit and our lawyers will address them,” the NBA said in an announcement.
Earlier this week, the NBA announced that it could remain with Disney’s ESPN/ABC, and enter into latest deals with Amazon and Comcast’s NBC starting in late 2025.
The core of the dispute centers around “back-end rights,” that are a standard clause in sports rights contracts, where an incumbent rightsholder gets the chance to match competing bids at the tip of a deal.
While a lot of the lawsuit is under seal, WBD maintains that TNT is legally in a position to match Amazon’s rights package.
The general public is in a position to view the whole lot of the matching rights clause, agreed to in 2014.
The NBA’s contention has been that WBD isn’t in a position to match Amazon, partially because WBD’s Max streaming service has about half of the worldwide reach of Amazon’s Prime Video.
Other points from the NBA include that Amazon’s rights package is labeled as streaming exclusive, whereas WBD’s games would air on Max and TNT, and there’s some disagreement about whether Amazon — a deep-pocketed company with a market cap of nearly $2 trillion — can provide extra money upfront than WBD, an organization price about $20 billion.
“Warner Bros. Discovery’s most up-to-date proposal didn’t match the terms of Amazon Prime Video’s offer and, subsequently, we now have entered right into a long-term arrangement with Amazon,” the NBA said in an announcement earlier this week.
“Throughout these negotiations, our primary objective has been to maximise the reach and accessibility of our games for our fans. Our latest arrangement with Amazon supports this goal by complementing the published, cable and streaming packages which can be already a part of our latest Disney and NBCUniversal arrangements. All three partners have also committed substantial resources to advertise the league and enhance the fan experience.”
