The head of the company, David Zaslav, does not want to spend fanciful sums on basketball.
And so begins the long road to negotiating what is likely to be another gigantic sports rights pact between a major league and a large number of media companies. The last NBA rights deal, inked with former Time Warner company Turner Sports and Walt Disney’s ESPN, was valued at more than $2 billion and will expire after the 2024-25 season. With the NFL recently inking Disney, Paramount Global, NBCUniversal, Fox and Amazon in what is believed to be a $110 billion 11-year deal, the NBA will likely be pushing for a significant increase.
That doesn’t seem to bother the top media executives at the helm of the companies likely to bid. “It has to be a business for the future. It can’t be a deal for the past,” Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said during an investor conference hosted by RBC. Disney CEO Bob Chapek recently told investors that Disney would like to do business with the NBA “as long as a pact with multi-platform rights can be structured in a tax-responsible manner.”
