Amazon's Poison Pill Ends TNT's 35-Year Relationship With The NBA

TNT says they matched Amazon's bid. The NBA says they didn't. So what happens next?

The NBA has officially announced its new media rights deals. After months of speculation, the world’s top basketball league has signed agreements with Disney, Comcast’s NBCUniversal, and Amazon. The agreements are worth $77 billion over 11 years, or $7 billion annually, and officially start with the 2025-26 season.

But let’s just cut to the chase — Warner Bros. Discovery (think: TNT) couldn’t come to an agreement, so they decided to use their contractual right to “match” Amazon’s ~$2 billion per year deal. However, after reviewing WBD’s matching bid for less than 48 hours, the NBA said that WBD’s proposal “did not match the terms of Amazon Prime Video’s offering” and that they were officially going with Disney, NBC, and Amazon.

TNT then responded with an afternoon press release, insinuating that they would take legal action against the NBA. And many fans are already calling the NBA and its owners greedy for ending a three-decade-long relationship with TNT (and the award-winning studio show “Inside the NBA”) in exchange for more money with Amazon.

Although, the truth is that Warner Bros. Discovery and TNT did this to themselves.

Not only did WBD CEO David Zaslav try to play hardball in negotiations by saying, “We don’t need the NBA,” but TNT had an exclusive negotiating window with the NBA baked into its last contract. The NBA’s other partner, Disney, left that exclusive negotiating window with a framework for a new deal in place, while TNT didn’t.

In fact, it’s being reported that TNT was the one who suggested bringing Amazon into the exclusive negotiating window, with the idea that a third broadcast partner (and package) could potentially shoulder some of the NBA’s increased fee demands.