NBA rejects TNT media rights offer, will enter arrangement with Amazon

The NBA made a final decision on which TV partner they settled with media rights on Wednesday evening. It appears that Warner Brothers did not match the proposal that Amazon Prime Video offered and as a result, the league decided to go with Amazon. On Wednesday evening, the NBA issued a statement on the matter.

“Warner Bros. Discovery’s most recent proposal did not match the terms of Amazon Prime Video’s offer and, therefore, we have entered into a long-term arrangement with Amazon.”

“Throughout these negotiations, our primary objective has been to maximize the reach and accessibility of our games for our fans. Our new arrangement with Amazon supports this goal by complementing the broadcast, cable, and streaming packages that are already part of our new Disney and NBCUniversal arrangements. All three partners have also committed substantial resources to promote the league and enhance the fan experience,” the NBA wrote in their statement on Wednesday evening.

“We are grateful to Turner Sports for its award-winning coverage of the NBA and look forward to another season of the NBA on TNT.”

The news means that the 2024-2025 season will officially be the final year of the popular show, “Inside the NBA” on TNT, with Kenny Smith, Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley, and Shaquille O’Neal.

More on the NBA and media rights

The NBA has agreed to a new media rights deal worth $76 billion across 11 years, sources told the Associated Press a few weeks ago.

Games will continue to air on ESPN and ABC, but NBC and Amazon Prime will feature NBA games as well. TNT Sports had five days to match one of the deals if they wanted to continue to broadcast the NBA. The new deal goes into effect during the 2025-26 season.

The five-day clock began once the NBA sent finished contracts to TNT.

This record-setting deal will reportedly ensure player salaries will continue to rise and change how fans can access games for the foreseeable future. The league’s salary cap is expected to rise at an annual rate of 10%, which is the maximum amount allowed by the most recent collective bargaining agreement set by the NBA and NBAPA.

Some of the NBA’s highest-paid stars could potentially be making roughly $80 million per season by 2030. When a new deal is made in just over a decade, those numbers could potentially keep climbing.

In 1998, NBA and Turner agreed to a $2.6 billion, four-year television rights deal that saw the annual salary cap sit at $30 million while the average NBA player made $2.5 million. In 2024, the average salary is well past $10 million — mainly because of how much these types of deals that the NBA has been able to secure throughout the years, growing each time it came up for renewal.

The previous deal was signed for nine years and worth $24 billion, a 216.667% increase.

Not only does that mean that players will be making money at a rate never before seen at the NBA level, but it also allows the possibility for the long-awaited NBA expansion now that the new CBA has been finished and the media rights deal is nearing completion.

Fans in cities like Las Vegas and Seattle have been expressing their interest in (re)acquiring a team. Kansas City has also been a city to watch, along with Montreal and Vancouver, among others. It’s unclear when the NBA could move forward with expansion talks, but it’s certainly moving its way up.

On3’s Barkley Truax also contributed to this article.