NBC Sports hopes to make aggressive bid to bring NBA back, sources say

Cue up John Tesh’s “Roundball Rock” – “The NBA on NBC” could return, if NBC Sports gets it right.

ComcastNBCUniversal is gearing up to make a strong bid to regain the National Basketball Association’s broadcast rights more than 20 years after the company lost them. disney and Turner Sports, according to people familiar with the matter.

NBCUniversal executives have notified the NBA of their interest, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. NBC Sports wants a package that would include playoff games to air on NBC’s broadcast network, two of the people said. Select regular season games may be exclusive to NBCUniversal’s streaming service, Peacock. The NBA could also decide to force media companies to stream all games simultaneously to increase reach, the people said.

Apple And Amazon have also expressed interest in the NBA purchasing cut-out streaming packages, people familiar with the matter said. Amazon currently has an agreement with the NBA allowing it to stream games in Brazil.

No formal discussion can take place with non-incumbent bidders unless Discovery of Warner Bros.owner of Turner Sports, and Disney agree to waive their exclusive trading windows, which end in April 2024, according to people familiar with the matter.

An NBA spokesperson confirmed that no discussions have taken place with NBCUniversal at this time on domestic rights, while adding that the league has “a long-standing relationship with Comcast/NBA as a former holder of NBA national television rights and through our teams’ numerous partnerships with NBC Sports regional sports networks.”

Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery owns the NBA rights until the end of the 2024-2025 season, more than two years from now. It’s possible the NBA could simply reconnect with the two existing parties and never open negotiations with outside bidders. That’s what happened in 2014, the league’s most recent renewal.

But that’s unlikely to happen this time, as streaming has become the dominant distribution method for watching TV, the people said. The NBA is likely to create one or two new packages for bidders, increasing their media rights partners from two to three or four, two of the people said.

Disney is expected to bid on a rights package for ESPN, ESPN+ and ABC, the people have said.

Interest from Warner Bros. Discovery for the NBA is murkier. CEO David Zaslav said in November, “We don’t need the NBA.” Turner’s relationship with the league includes the longtime studio show “Inside the NBA,” hosted by Ernie Johnson and former NBA stars Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith and Shaquille O’Neal. Zaslav and the sporting director of Warner Bros. Discovery’s Luis Silberwasser will likely use this year to decide what kind of future relationship they want with the NBA, according to a person familiar with their thinking.

Spokespersons for NBCUniversal, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Amazon declined to comment. An Apple spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment.

NBCUniversal may compete directly with Warner Bros. Discovery to be the league’s second traditional television partner, along with ESPN. NBCUniversal may offer a broadcast network (NBC) to show NBA games if pay-TV providers start moving away from cable networks, such as TNT and TBS, which primarily air reruns of scripted programs when sports aren’t on. broadcast. Comcast also owns Sky, which could give the NBA another international broadcast spot.

“What you have today are programmers selling us content at increasingly higher prices and asking us to distribute it to most of our customers, and at the same time selling the exact same content either on streaming platforms, or by creating a direct-to-consumer product themselves at a much lower cost,” Chris Winfrey, CEO of Charter, America’s second-largest cable company, said in comments published by CNBC this week. “Our willingness to continue to fund this for programmers when this content is freely available elsewhere is diminishing. This means that in linear video construction, you will see an increasing number of distributors deciding that it no longer makes sense to carry certain content. “

Warner Bros. Discovery can counter with a larger global streaming service — the HBO Max/Discovery+ combo (likely to be called Max) — launching later this year. Warner Bros. Discovery ended September with around 95 million streaming subscribers, far surpassing Peacock’s 20 million, which is in the US alone. The NBA has partnered with Turner Sports for nearly 40 years.

“The NBA on NBC” is fondly remembered by many NBA fans for its dramatic theme song “Roundball Rock” and the defining shows of the Chicago Bulls era under Michael Jordan winning six titles in the 1990s. NBC aired its last NBA games in the 2002 Finals, when the Los Angeles Lakers swept the New Jersey Nets. Games have been split between Disney’s ESPN and ABC and Turner Sports’ TNT and TBS for the past two decades. ABC airs the NBA Finals.

The NBA offers live programming that is valuable to advertisers and regularly commands millions of viewers. NBA regular season games on ABC, ESPN and TNT average 1.6 million viewers this season. That’s been flat for a year, even as the total number of U.S. homes with cable TV subscriptions fell from 70 million to 62 million, according to NBA data.

NBA rights are set to be renewed as global media companies cut costs, which could put pressure on the league to lower expectations on the size of a price increase . Warner Bros. Discovery laid off thousands of employees and cut billions in content costs last year. Disney last week announced plans to cut 7,000 jobs and cut costs by $5.5 billion, including $3 billion in savings on non-sports content. The NFL secured increases of 40% to 80% for its media rights when it renewed its deal for 11 years in 2021.

It’s too early to tell how much the NBA will be able to boost revenue from its new TV deal, but early suggestions of a 200% increase from around $25 billion to more than $70 billion over nine years are probably overly optimistic, according to people familiar with the matter. An annual increase closer to 100% might be more likely, given the secular declines in the linear pay-TV and streaming businesses that continue to lose billions of dollars each year, two of the people said.

WATCH: Full CNBC interview with David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery

Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.