“Roundball Rock” is back in the NBA’s new TV deal. And there’s lots more for viewers to know
FILE - An NBA logo is seen on an official game ball before a basketball game, Feb. 1, 2014, in New York. The NBA said Wednesday, July 24, 2024 that it is not accepting Warner Bros. Discovery’s $1.8 billion per year offer to continue its longtime relationship with the league and therefore has entered into a deal with Amazon Prime Video, a move that would mean this coming season would end a nearly four-decade run of games being on TNT. (AP Photo/Jason DeCrow, file)
Welcome back, “Roundball Rock.”
John Tesh’s iconic theme music for NBA broadcasts on NBC is coming back when the league’s new media rights deals commence in the 2025-26 season and is one of many highlights of the 11-year agreement the league finally completed Wednesday.
Some other elements of the deals that might be pertinent to viewers:
Sunday Night Basketball …
NBC already has the wildly successful Sunday Night Football, and when the NFL playoffs are over, get ready for Sunday Night Basketball. A one-hour pregame show will start at 7 p.m. Eastern, followed by an 8 p.m. game on NBC and Peacock.
… and Monday Night Basketball
Peacock will also broadcast national Monday regular-season games weekly and Monday night doubleheaders later in the season. NBCUniversal will also have two games on Martin Luther King Jr. Day each January.
What Disney Gets
Disney, which is ABC and ESPN, will distribute 80 regular-season games each season, with at least 20 on ABC (on weekends) and up to 60 on ESPN (mostly Wednesdays and Fridays).
Disney also:
— will continue broadcasting the NBA Finals.
— will continue broadcasting all five Christmas games.
— will have exclusive national coverage of the final day of the regular season.
— will have a conference finals series 10 times in the agreement’s 11 years.
— keeps the NBA draft and NBA draft lottery.
What NBC Gets
NBCU, which is NBC and Peacock, will show up to 100 regular-season games each season, more than half of them on NBC on Sundays and Tuesdays. It will also have the league’s opening night doubleheader.
NBC also:
— gets a conference finals in six of the 11 years of the agreement.
— becomes the home of all USA Basketball senior men’s and women’s games, which aligns with the network’s Olympic platform.
— will see Xfinity become the Official TV Service of the NBA, WNBA and USA Basketball.
What Amazon Gets
Prime Video will distribute all six NBA Play-In Tournament games, plus will stream about one-third of the games played in the first two rounds of the playoffs.
Amazon also:
— gets a conference finals in six of the 11 years of the agreement.
— will send an expanded package of games to Mexico, Brazil, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Britain and Ireland, including a conference finals series each year and the NBA Finals in six of the 11 years.
— will stream half of the games from NBA Summer League.
More TV games
The NBA says that “approximately 75 regular-season games will be on broadcast TV” in each of the 11 seasons of the new deal. That’s about five times more than what’s required to be on broadcast now under the current agreement.
All-Star Weekend
NBC will replace TNT as the home of the NBA’s All-Star weekend starting in 2026, including Rising Stars, All-Star Saturday Night — featuring the dunk, 3-point and skills competitions — and the All-Star Game.
Black Friday
Part of Amazon’s deal includes a new game on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. It’s one of 66 regular-season NBA games that will be on Prime Video each year, including the knockout rounds of the NBA Cup.
NBA App
The league can reasonably expect there to be some confusion at first about which games are on which network on which night.
The NBA App is going to — the league hopes, anyway — serve as the fix to those issues, by becoming, in the league’s words, “a universal access point — seamlessly directing fans to every national game on Disney, NBCU and Amazon platforms.”
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said the league needs to “innovate in how we deliver our games.”
“A lot of that comes through all the benefits of streaming technology and the way you can customize the games, personalize them, make other services available, make them easier to find frankly when you’re on different networks, make them available in multiple languages, multiple angles,” Silver said. “It’s something earlier in my career I spent a lot of time on when I was in NBA Entertainment. I’m looking forward to the ongoing investment in resources to make this an even more fan-friendly product.”
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