<\/div>\n
But Warner Bros. Discovery’s decision to match the Amazon package, rather than the $2.5 billion-per-year NBCUniversal agreement, caused the league to say Wednesday that the matching rights are invalid. Warner Bros. Discovery’s offer for that package involves airing the NBA games on its cable network TNT and simulcasting them on its streaming service, Max. That’s not an apples-to-apples comparison to Amazon Prime Video, which is a streaming-only service, the league argued.<\/p>\n
Warner Bros. Discovery argued in a court filing Friday that its matching rights should still apply to the Amazon package because many of the games in that package previously aired on cable TV.<\/p>\n
“The MRE (Matching Rights Exhibit) further provides that, “[i]n the event that TBS Matches a Third Party Offer that includes Cable Rights” and no other Incumbent matches, then TBS shall have the exclusive right and obligation to exercise the Cable Rights provided for (and on the same terms set forth) in the Third Party Offer,” Warner Bros. Discovery wrote in its court filing. “That is exactly what happened here: Amazon made an offer for Cable Rights as defined in the MRE, and TBS matched it. But, in breach of the Agreement, the NBA has refused to honor TBS’s match.” TBS is a cable TV network owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.<\/p>\n
In a letter the NBA sent to Warner Bros. Discovery on Wednesday, the league pointed to the contractual language of the 2014 matching rights as its reason for rejecting the offer.<\/p>\n
The NBA cited the clause: “In the event that an incumbent matches a third party offer that provides for the exercise of game rights via any specific form of combined audio and video distribution, such incumbent shall have the right and obligation to exercise such game rights only via the specified form of combined audio and video distribution (e.g. if the specific form of combined audio and video distribution is internet distribution, a matching incumbent may not exercise such games rights via television distribution).”<\/p>\n
CNBC’s David Faber on Thursday reported<\/span> Warner Bros. Discovery had moved to sue the NBA.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nNBA’s value to Turner<\/h2>\n\n
In 2022, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said that his company<\/span> did not “have to have the NBA” if the economics weren’t sound.<\/p>\n “With sport, we’re a renter,” Zaslav said at a November 2022 investor conference<\/span>. “That’s not as good of a business.”<\/p>\nStill, Friday’s lawsuit expounded on the value of the NBA to Turner Sports. Owning NBA rights is valuable to the health of Warner Bros. Discovery’s cable TV business, which has suffered in recent years as millions of Americans cancel traditional pay TV in favor of a bundle of streaming services.<\/p>\n
“NBA games drive significant viewership and ratings, as consumers are more likely to watch games live, in real time. This, in turn, affects the price TBS and WBD can charge to their advertisers and downstream distributors that license TNT for transmission to their customers,” the company wrote in the complaint. “NBA distribution rights thus give both TBS and WBD the ability to grow their brands and reach a larger group of consumers that only NBA games bring. NBA telecast rights also give TBS and WBD a competitive advantage over other programmers, particularly when negotiating with other leagues for sports rights.”<\/p>\n
Warner Bros. Discovery argued the NBA brings “intangible and incalculable benefits” to the company’s business and asked for “preliminary and permanent injunctive relief to prohibit the NBA from licensing these unique and irreplaceable rights [to Amazon],” while adding that if “equitable relief is not granted,” it expects “monetary damages” from the NBA.<\/p>\n
Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.<\/em><\/p>\nWATCH: Warner Bros. Discovery sues NBA over matching rights<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In this article WBD Follow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNT NBA Commissioner Adam Silver addresses media at the Thomas & Mack Center on July 16, 2024, in Las Vegas. Mick Akers | Las Vegas Review-journal | Tribune News Service | Getty Images Warner Bros. Discovery sued the NBA on Friday as it tries to maintain …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72251,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bussiness","has-thumb","has-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72250"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}