WBD CEO David Zaslav’s “inability to anticipate" NBCUniversal’s reported bid to air a package of NBA games is a “failure in and of itself"Ron Chenoy/USA TODAY NETWORK
Puck's Matthew Belloni and The Ringer's Bill Simmons sat down to talk about the ongoing NBA media rights negotiations, with both giving their opinions on how the breakdown of the three separate packages will shake out after reports that Disney
plans to continue holding onto its package -- albeit at an increased rate of roughly $2.6B per year -- and Amazon's Prime Video is
set to get a streaming-only package this time around. With reports that NBCUniversal is
planning to offer $2.5B a year for the package that is currently owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, Belloni noted "it would be a pretty big disaster" for WBD if it can't retain those rights. Belloni: "We will know probably within the next month or two what the future of the NBA on TV and streaming will look like." Both Belloni and Simmons predicted the three rightsholders will be Disney/ESPN/ABC, Amazon and NBCUniversal. Simmons noted he is "positive" that Amazon is going to get an NBA package, as the league would "want what the NFL was able to get just in one year with Sunday Ticket and Google and YouTube." Simmons: "Amazon killed it for the NFL." Belloni noted that he thought Apple would also have "put in a bid" for the package, but Apple "doesn't want to be one package, they want the whole thing." Belloni: "Look what they did with MLS, they just took over the league." When the topic shifted to the "Inside the NBA" studio show on TNT, Belloni said he believes whether WBD gets the NBA package or not, "that show will remain intact somewhere." Simmons agreed, saying, "Amazon will just basically buy that show from them" (
"The Town with Matthew Belloni," 5/1).
RELATED: WBD contemplating next move after NBC’s pricey NBA bid
PLACING THE BLAME: PUCK's Dylan Byers wrote WBD CEO David Zaslav’s “inability to anticipate" NBCUniversal’s reported bid to air a package of NBA games is a “failure in and of itself." On some level, this "very predictable scenario” may have “been a crisis of Zaslav’s own making.” In 2022, Zaslav said, “
We don’t have to have the NBA.” Byers wrote it was a "risky bluff," coming less than two years before the rights-renewal window. ESPN’s $2.6B a year “A package” renewal is a “veritable bargain.” Zaslav “likely could have arrived at a similar pro rata deal” for the “B package” that "locked the annual price tag in somewhere around" $2.2B or $2.3B. Instead, he put himself in the “unenviable, damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t position of either losing his NBA rights to NBC, or being forced to outbid" Comcast Chair & CEO Brian Roberts, which will “inevitably trim the profit margin” (
PUCK, 5/1).
RELATED: Charles Barkley’s TNT contract has out clause in case WBD loses NBA
