Big issue for the NBA. The North American Basketball League is currently negotiating its next broadcast contract for its domestic market, which will begin with the 2025-2026 season. And according to The Athletic, Amazon Prime Video would have drawn up the framework of a 10-year agreement which should include regular season matches but also play-offs. The American platform could recover Thursday evening NBA matches, which would make sense since it already offers Thursday NFL posters from September to January.
According to information from Puck, the NBA and its long-time partner ESPN (Disney) have reached an agreement to extend the story by a decade, notably retaining the exclusive rights to the NBA finals. Another long-standing partner, TNT (Warner Bros Discovery) is also likely to continue offering matches. But this should go, just like ESPN, from 100 to 80 matches per season.
The NBA, which currently receives $2.66 billion (2.5 billion euros) per season, expects to double this amount for the next cycle.
The powerful league is also negotiating its international rights which are not modeled, neither in renewal date nor in duration, on its domestic rights. In France, the contract with beIN Sports expires at the end of this season and, for the moment, no renewal has been announced for the next cycle.
