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[XiaNaphryz]

www.nytimes.com/2014/10/06/sports/basketball/nba-said-to-be-near-new-tv-deal-for-24-billion.html

The N.B.A. will receive $24 billion over nine years in deals the league has renewed with ESPN and TNT through the 2024-25 season, according to an executive briefed on the details of the contracts but not authorized to speak publicly.

The deals, which will be announced Monday, represent a near-tripling of the annual average rights fees that ESPN and TNT have been paying in contracts that will end after the 2015-16 season.

The average yearly payments will rise from about $930 million to $2.66 billion.

The N.B.A. is the latest sports league to benefit from networks’ ever-growing belief in the power of live sports — and their willingness to pay richly for it.

Rights deals keep rising without any sign of abating, as do the monthly cable bills for consumers, which have been heavily affected by skyrocketing sports rights.

The N.F.L. last week struck a deal that will require DirecTV to pay $1.5 billion a year for eight years, through 2022, to retain its rights to carry NFL Sunday Ticket, a satellite package of out-of-market games. Next year, the N.F.L. expects to take in between $6.5 billion and $7 billion a year in rights fees from its TV partners.

The new N.B.A. deal was much anticipated and will be the first for the new commissioner, Adam Silver. There was considerable speculation that the league might carve out a package of games for Fox Broadcasting and its cable network, Fox Sports 1, but the league ultimately stuck with ESPN and TNT.

LeBron James signed a two-year deal with the Cleveland Cavaliers this year, recognizing that he will be able to get even more in another contract when the new TV deals start.

 

[Nuklear]

I was so hoping Fox Sports 1 or NBCSN would pick them up and ESPN would get booted. ESPN's coverage is pretty terrible.

 

[smurfx]

hurray cable subscribers will have to pay more now.

 

[DJwest]

LeBron and KD getting ready for their mega contracts. Hopefully the owners don't bullshit them again during the next CBA negotiations.

 

[jwhit28]

NBC's cupboard seems really bare. They just lost MLS. They have 1 NFL game a week, Notre Dame football, Olympics, Cycling, Premiere League, NHL , and some smaller college conferences.

 

[RBH]

This is a real interesting part of the new deal that could have wider implications:

The NBA's agreement on a more than $20 billion multi-year contract with broadcast partners Walt Disney Co and Time Warner Inc was overshadowed by news that Disney’s ESPN is joining the basketball league to create an Internet sports channel available without a pay TV subscription.

A new streaming channel planned by ESPN, which sources familiar with the plans said would be widened to include other sports, is an early step that could upend the traditional cable and satellite companies if it leads to more consumers cancelling their pay TV service.

Cable and satellite providers pay Disney and Time Warner richly for their sports-heavy content. ESPN executives insist they are committed to the current pay TV system, and that any programming sold directly to consumers will complement rather than compete with the content available through pay TV packages.

But others said the streaming channel could have the same kind of transformative effect on sports programming that Netflix Inc has had on dramas and sitcoms.

"This is the first crack in the structure of the television business that has been in place for decades," said Forrester analyst Jim Nail.

Under the new deal, ESPN will make a limited number of regular season NBA games available on the streaming channel, the sources said. The offerings will be expanded to include other sports, they said. The sources could not speak on the record because terms of the deal were not public.

ESPN said in May that it was considering selling online access to live Major League Soccer games to consumers without pay TV subscriptions.

The network said in a statement on Monday it has a framework in place with the NBA for the streaming service, and that the league would have an equity interest in the product.

ESPN offered the equity interest to the NBA as an incentive for the league to choose the streaming service - rather than a new programming partner such as Fox - for certain games, the sources said. The games being made available are those not already being shown on television ESPN and Turner as part of the rights renewal package, they said.

https://news.yahoo.com/nba-tv-deal-allows-espn-internet-streaming-channel-022429656--nba.html

 

[slightconfuse]

They should use some of that money to buy the NBA on NBC theme

also I'm sure the players will befit greatly from all this extra money

 

[DarkFlow]

They should use some of that money to buy the NBA on NBC theme

also I'm sure the players will befit greatly from all this extra money

Oh they will, the Cap is about to get a lot higher.

 

[A Serious Man]

NBC's cupboard seems really bare. They just lost MLS. They have 1 NFL game a week, Notre Dame football, Olympics, Cycling, Premiere League, NHL , and some smaller college conferences.

They have Formula 1 and IndyCar as well and EPL ratings are much bigger in the US than MLS, so that's not a huge loss. NBCSN has had steady growth over the last few years thanks to snatching up the EPL rights and the NHLs constant rise in ratings. It's still miles behind ESPN but it's trending upwards.

 

[jwhit28]

They should use some of that money to buy the NBA on NBC theme

also I'm sure the players will befit greatly from all this extra money

The salary cap and how the league calculates what the maximum contract can be worth is directly tied to league revenue. Lebron only signed a 2 year deal this off-season so he can max out AFTER the new TV deal for more money. Lebron still gets paid pitifully compared to top players in MLB and NFL. A max limit on contracts should be thrown out altogether.

 

[RBH]

Under the current deal, corporate siblings ESPN and ABC broadcast 90 regular-season games while TNT broadcasts 52. Under terms of the new contract, ESPN/ABC will get an additional 10 games, and TNT will get another 12, meaning that 164 of the NBA's 1,230 regular season games (13.33 percent) will be nationally televised. While this represents increased exposure for the league, it also represents an enormous challenge. As it stands, the league's national-television scheduling process is a shit sandwich.

One way the NBA will combat the above problems is by increasing flex scheduling. Currently, its ability to flex is limited. There are often only two games on the Thursday schedule for TNT's doubleheader, and ABC's Sunday afternoon matchup is the only game on at that time as well. If a dud is scheduled into either of those two slots, there is no way of getting out of it.

At the press conference announcing the new deal, Adam Silver made a distinction between game exclusivity and window exclusivity. Under terms of the old deal, many nationally televised games had "window exclusivity," meaning they were the only games scheduled during a particular window. But under the new deal, those games will only have "game exclusivity," meaning other games can be broadcast on local television at the same time. This will allow the NBA to swap in an attractive game that had been penciled in for local television, and instead show it to the entire country, a la the NFL's flex scheduling.

Carriage fees for sports networks already make up the largest chunk of your cable bill, and that chunk will only grow due to this deal. Cable providers currently pay $5.75 a month to carry ESPN, $1.28 to carry TNT, and $0.27 to carry NBA TV. With ESPN shelling out an extra $915 million annually and TNT an extra $755 million under the new deal, you can be certain that they will charge cable providers more, who will in turn pass those costs on to you. Your cable bill will increase a couple of dollars a month solely because of the NBA.

http://deadspin.com/what-the-nbas-insane-new-tv-deal-means-for-the-league-a-1642926274

 

[shira]

Are we even going to be watching TV in 9 years? You can probably stream that shit in 4k in the next 3 years.

 

[Ninja Scooter]

Take a pay cut though, guys

 

[Omega]

Are we even going to be watching TV in 9 years? You can probably stream that shit in 4k in the next 3 years.

technology might allow us to watch in 4k but it won't happen

you really think the telecomm industry is gonna let that happen?

 

[Ken Masters]

The cap space in the NBA right now is pathetic, the NBAPA is an embarrassment

 

[Anth0ny]

Are we even going to be watching TV in 9 years? You can probably stream that shit in 4k in the next 3 years.

Sports aren't even 1080p yet lol

 

[Ninja Scooter]

The cap space in the NBA right now is pathetic, the NBAPA is an embarrassment

LeBron James made $19 million last season. That would have made him the 21st highest paid player in Major League Baseball. Forget the fact that worldwide he is far better known than ANY baseball player and brings in way more revenue, if you were to measure his impact on the court in the same way you do with baseball, he would probably be worth like 20 WAR (Mike Trout, widely considered the best player in baseball, is probably good for 8-10 WAR per season). The Players Association is a joke.

 

[overcast]

Take a pay cut though, guys

Yeah. This is ridiculous. We'll get another lockout regardless of this.

 

[Ken Masters]

Yeah. This is ridiculous. We'll get another lockout regardless of this.

I wouldn't mind they strike for entire season if it means they don't get screwed by these billionaire owners

 

[Nuklear]

Are we even going to be watching TV in 9 years? You can probably stream that shit in 4k in the next 3 years.

In the US? Lol, not a chance. Local cable monopolies keep the US behind the curve when it comes to Internet speeds.