It’s Been Over 20 Years, But NBA on NBC May Become a Thing Again

Many defining moments in professional basketball took place when the NBA was airing on NBC. That period marked Michael Jordan’s heyday, the 90s, when he and the Chicago Bulls won six titles. And just hearing the opening bars of John Tesh’s “Roundball Rock” brings this spectacular time in basketball history to mind.

Now NBC is reportedly preparing to bid on the rights to broadcast National Basketball Association games two decades after losing them to Disney (ESPN/ABC) and Turner Sports. And things have changed a lot. Linear TV viewing – watching a TV show via cable, satellite or over the air at the show’s scheduled time – has been overtaken by streaming. Streaming came into vogue in the late 2000s, and NBC broadcast its last NBA game in 2002.

The NFL inked a long-term television rights deal in 2021 that spans TV, cable and digital platforms. Five media entities are involved: CBS, ESPN/ABC, Fox, NBC and Amazon. Mary Beth Furst, Associate Area Chair in Marketing at the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business, thinks the NBA will do something similar.

“Bottom line, nostalgia isn’t going to win. NBC is not going to get the sole rights to the NBA.” She says, “the days of a single network having an entire sports league’s media rights, they’re gone.” Furst also points out the tremendous reach of the NBA brand, which she says is one of the reasons adding streaming services into the mix “makes so much sense because then you’re not in any way tied to your local market. You can get access to whatever team you want to watch, wherever you live. And because of their global reach, these major streaming services offer the unique opportunity to reach these customers.”

NBCUniversal has Peacock, but CNBC reports Amazon and Apple have let the NBA know they’re interested in buying streaming packages from the league. Amazon already has a deal with the NBA to stream games in Brazil.

Since Disney and Warner Brothers Discovery (which owns Turner Broadcasting) own the NBA rights until the end of the 2024-2025 season, no one else can negotiate with the NBA for the rights until April 2024. For outside bidders to formally negotiate with the NBA before then, Warner Bros. and Disney would have to waive their exclusive negotiation windows. Furst says that won’t likely happen. That exclusivity “gives them a lot of power.”

When NBC paid over $600 million in 1989 for the rights to televise NBA games it was more than three times what CBS paid before them. Things have changed a bit. The NFL is getting over $100 billion in that 2021 deal that took effect this year and goes through 2033.

The NBA reportedly wants to triple what it’s currently making from TV deals, which is said to be over $2 billion.

Furst says the same thing holds true for all the major professional sports leagues. What they want is to draw, “younger viewers and they want them for years. They want that long-term commitment of watching sports and having young fans feel like they’re part of the teams.”

Undoubtedly, the NBA’s ability to lure in young viewers will figure prominently in negotiations over TV and streaming rights.