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The NBA has informed teams that it may launch a streaming hub for local broadcasts as soon as next season -- a year earlier than expected -- as a result of Main Street Sports Group’s impending demise in April, multiple sources told SBJ. While the exact format is still being ideated, those sources said the league is in talks with YouTube TV, DAZN, Amazon and ESPN and potentially others about housing local games for an aggregate of teams -- perhaps similar to an NFL Sunday Ticket -- depending on how many franchises opt in. Sources believe those streaming platforms would need the NBA to guarantee a certain threshold of teams before agreeing to any substantive deal, which industry insiders believe could be worth billions.
As the NBA aggressively accelerates its expansion into the European market, plans are solidifying for a 16-team continental league launched with the strategic support of FIBA. According to recent reports from Sports Business Journal and other major media outlets, Amazon and YouTube have emerged as top candidates to secure global broadcasting rights for the venture. This new top-tier competition, widely referred to as NBA Europe, is currently targeting an inaugural tip-off in October 2027, perfectly aligned with the start of the 2027-28 season.
League executives have spent the past month meeting with dozens of potential investors in franchises in Europe, including wealthy individuals and private equity funds. Non-binding bids for those teams are due in late March. I’m told the NBA wants franchise fees of about $1 billion, though some investor groups have balked at that number and have pushed for fees closer to $500 million. It’s possible the NBA Board of Governors could greenlight the sale of franchises in some cities, and thus the formation of the league, during its upcoming March meeting. The NBA has targeted October 2027 for the league’s debut. The NBA has held conversations with several media companies with global aspirations to broadcast the games, including Amazon and YouTube, according to sources familiar with the matter. Amazon and YouTube spokespeople declined to comment. No decision on a broadcast partner or partners has been made yet, according to an NBA spokesperson.
John Ourand of Puck reported Thursday that the NBA hopes to bundle a package of local rights to sell as soon as next season and has already begun talks with streamers, including Amazon, ESPN, Google, Apple and DAZN. It had already been reported by Tom Friend of Sports Business Journal last summer that the NBA planned to centralize at least some portion of its local media rights by the 2027-28 season, but the timeline would seem to have been accelerated by the imminent collapse of Main Street Sports Group, operator of the FanDuel Sports Network RSNs. Friend and Mike Mazzeo noted in December that the Main Street situation had created “urgency” for the NBA to launch a centralized option in time for next season.
The NBA’s 11-year, $76B media rights agreements with Amazon, NBC and ESPN kicked off this season, and those deals have enabled MSG Sports to largely offset significant RSN revenue declines for its two teams. MSG Sports, the parent company of the Knicks and Rangers, disclosed in its latest earnings report a $18.6M bump in league distributions during fiscal Q2 (the final three months of 2025). That increase, primarily from the NBA’s new media deals, mostly made up for a $21.9M decline in local media rights from the teams’ recently revised agreement with local broadcaster MSG Networks, under which the Knicks and Rangers saw 28% and 18% reductions in annual rights fees, respectively. The revised agreement also eliminated contractual rights fee escalators.
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You just saw No. 41 at the Mark Aguirre Jersey Retirement ceremony earlier this week and, to my knowledge, he and Mavericks majority owner Patrick Dumont have had an open dialogue since the spring ... months before Harrison's firing. The Mavericks badly want Nowitzki to return to the organization and have conveyed to him that he can do so in any role he chooses, but the 47-year-old has focused this season on his new job as a studio analyst for Amazon as well as his various duties and travel obligations as a FIBA board member and global ambassador for the sport's international governing body.
But he’ll be doing a game broadcast for Amazon on Thursday, when he returns to Capital One Arena to do color commentary for the Wizards’ game against the Milwaukee Bucks. That isn’t a coincidence. The organization is also honoring Wall, the team’s all-time leader in assists (5,282) and steals (976) during the game, which is being billed as “John Wall appreciation night,” part of multiple festivities honoring Wall, the top pick in the 2010 draft. “John is in our pantheon,” Wizards owner and governor Ted Leonsis said.
The NBA brought on NBC and Amazon as new partners, while parting ways with Warner Bros. Discovery for the first time in more than two decades. The deal allowed for 75 more national games this year with the addition of NBC’s over-the-air channel, and exclusive streamed games on Peacock and Prime Video for the first time. But it’s also led to fragmentation and rising costs for fans hoping to catch all NBA games. The table above shows that a monthly subscription across all platforms needed to watch NBA games will cost nearly $130 before tax (YouTube TV is an example of a live-TV service, comparable to cable). It will cost nearly $1,000 for an eight-month subscription, which would encompass a full NBA season, and nearly $1,400 for annual subscriptions across the four platforms.
The new NBA media rights deals is still paying dividends two months in. NBA games were averaging 1.81 million viewers across NBCUniversal, ESPN and Amazon’s Prime Video through last week’s NBA Cup Final, a figure that includes Adobe Analytics-measured viewership for NBC games — up 27% from last year and the highest average at this point of a season since 2017. The year-over-year increase rises to 53% including games on NBA TV, which is airing far fewer games this season than in past years, and thus drags down the average far less.
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Coming out of bankruptcy with a much lighter debt load, Main Street Sports has struck partnerships with companies such as Amazon and FanDuel, including rebranding its TV channels and direct-to-consumer offering as FanDuel Sports Network. Today, Main Street Sports has the local rights to 29 major league teams in the U.S., across the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League and Major League Baseball.
Las Vegas is only getting hotter, as Amazon Music has enlisted Nas to deliver a special performance between the Emirates NBA Cup 2025 Semifinals. Live from the Toshiba Arena Plaza, Nas will headline Amazon’s “In the Paint” concert on Saturday (Dec. 13.), as he’s coming off his hotly anticipated collaborative project, Light Years, with DJ Premier.
NBA Nightcap, Amazon’s postgame talk and analysis show, has been a hit in its debut season, adding innovations to the format such as high-tech studio segments and fresh voices from vets like Blake Griffin, Dirk Nowitzki, Steve Nash, and Udonis Haslem. This week, the show will add a new wrinkle: Musical performances. On Friday, December 5, NBA Nightcap will debut its new segment, “Amazon Music Presents: In The Paint,” with its first-ever musical guests, Clipse.
Spectrum's deal with the Lakers reportedly pays them an average of $150 million through 2032, the single entity that drives the team's financial advantage over its rivals. It's roughly triple the average of the rest of the league, sources said. Last year, NBA teams received about $110 million each from the national rights deals. This year, that number is boosting to more than $140 million as part of a new 11-year, $77 billion agreement with ESPN, Amazon and NBC. Earlier this year, the New York Knicks, who have the second-largest local media deal, accepted a 28% reduction in annual payments due to financial problems at rights holder MSG Network. The Knicks had been receiving $135 million a year before the reduction.