NBA near $76B TV deal with NBC, Amazon and ESPN, WSJ reports

The National Basketball Association is closing in on deals with Comcast’s (CMCSA) NBC, Disney’s (DIS) ESPN and Amazon’s (AMZN) Prime Video that would bring in about $76B in media revenue over 11 years under a new media rights agreement, people familiar with the discussions told The Wall Street Journal’s Joe Flint, Amol Sharma and Isabella Simonetti. NBC is near an accord with the league to pay an average of $2.5B a year to show around 100 games per season, people familiar with the talks said. Amazon’s $1.8B-a-year package would include regular-season and playoff games, the report noted. Disney would retain an NBA package and would continue to air the NBA Finals, with payments averaging about $2.6B a year, according to the sources. TNT parent Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) still has a right to match a rival package and “the league could always carve out a new package for the company in the final stretch, but its options are limited,” the report added.