Rumors

The Mickey Mouse-themed alt-cast, which featured on ESPN2, ESPN+ and Disney+ during Wednesday’s Spurs-Knicks matchup, featured animated versions of each team’s players with Disney characters occasionally subbing into the action. At various points, Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns was Goofy, Bridges was Donald Duck and Spurs point guard Chris Paul was Mickey Mouse. Viewers also saw Donald Duck coach the Knicks and Daisy as a sideline reporter next to the pairing of Monica McNutt and Drew Carter. Goofy and Mickey delivered halftime speeches to the Spurs and Knicks, respectively. Aside from the action-packed game, the highlight of the show came during halftime when an animated version of NBA commissioner Adam Silver and gingerbread men judged a dunk contest of Disney characters. Goofy, Donald Duck, Pluto, Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse were involved. Minnie won the dunk contest with an acrobatic final dunk that included jumping over a castle.

New York Times

The NBA is nearing completion of a combined 11-year, $76 billion set of deals with Disney, NBC and Amazon. The deals average out to $6.9 billion per season for the NBA, which is more than 2.5 times higher than its existing deals. The NFL recently doubled its feeds under its last deal to around $10 billion per year.  An official announcement could still be weeks away as it will need approval from the Board of Governors.  ESPN's deal is considered the "A" package and they will pay an average of $2.6 billion per year, which is up from $1.5 billion under the current deal. While ESPN will broadcast fewer overall games, they retain both The Finals and a Conference Finals annually. ESPN will be allowed to air games on its direct-to-consumer streaming service expected to launch in 2025.

RealGM

Beginning in 2025, NBC plans on streaming approximately 50 NBA games per season exclusively on Peacock. NBC will broadcast games on its network on Tuesdays and Sundays when there isn’t a conflict with NBC’s “Sunday Night Football.” NBC is close to finalizing a $2.5 billion per year deal with the NBA that has been viewed with contrasting opinions within the company. Some believe NBC is overpaying to air the NBA, while others expect it to help with its fledgling Peacock streaming service. Peacock lost $639 million in the most recent quarter. 

RealGM

The NBA is formalizing written contracts with Disney, NBC and Amazon this week, with sources calling it the final stage of media rights negotiations that may inevitably lead incumbent Warner Bros. Discovery to take legal action.  Industry sources believe ESPN will ultimately pay $2.8B annually -- up from a reported $2.6B -- for the league's "A" package, which includes the NBA Finals, a conference final, weekly primetime games, the WNBA and likely shared international rights.

Sports Business Journal

NBC's proposed "B" package is believed to be now worth $2.6B annually -- up from a reported $2.5B -- and would probably include a "Basketball Night in America" on Sunday nights following the NFL season, a total of two primetime windows a week, conference semifinals and a conference final. Amazon's deal is believed to be worth between $1.8B and $2B and would likely include the Emirates In-Season Tournament, the SoFi Play-In Tournament, first-round playoff games, the WNBA and international rights.

Sports Business Journal

The final tweaks -- which sources said have been fluid and changing almost every other day -- are expected to be finalized in the coming days or week, at which time sources said all three networks will go to their respective boards to have the written bids ratified. At that point, sources said the league will take NBC's contract to WBD to see if WBD CEO David Zaslav is able to match it in "total value."

Sports Business Journal

Evan Sidery: The NBA is finalizing media rights deals with ESPN, NBC and Amazon later this week, per @SBJ (sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2024/…). 2024-25 will be officially the last season for “Inside the NBA” on TNT with Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith, Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal. pic.twitter.com/iJEu7rJJSc

Twitter

disneyparks: NBA stars Giannis Antetokounmpo and Brook Lopez recently spent a slam-dunk day at @WaltDisneyWorld experiencing classic attractions — including TRON Lightcycle/Run presented by Enterprise! 🏀💙

Instagram

The NBA’s looming media rights deals with Disney, Amazon and potentially Comcast could reach as high as $76 billion over the course of 11 years, Lucas Shaw of Bloomberg reported Thursday.

Sports Media Watch

Disney, the parent of ESPN and ABC, is the other major TV partner and is expected to pay an average per-year fee of about $2.6 billion to renew its deal, the people familiar with the situation said, up from about $1.5 billion a year now.

Wall Street Journal

Amazon is likely to get a share of the Conference Finals alongside the other partners, and Disney’s ABC is on track to retain the rights to the NBA Finals, some of the people said.

Wall Street Journal

The National Basketball Association’s exclusive media rights negotiating window with current partners Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery is likely to expire Monday without a new deal, according to people familiar with the matter.

CNBC

Beginning next week, the NBA will be able to work on agreements for new partners to show packages of games. Amazon, Apple, YouTube TV, Comcast’s NBCUniversal/Peacock and Netflix have all had preliminary conversations with the league expressing potential interest, CNBC reported last year. The exclusive negotiating window with the league’s incumbent partners officially ends Monday.

CNBC

The NBA opened its exclusive media rights negotiations with Disney and Turner on Saturday, a window that runs through April 22, and sources said Friday they believe the three sides entered talks roughly 75% in agreement on a deal based on their preliminary discussions over the past several months.

Sports Business Journal