Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Report: NBA Wants Huge Payday

The National Basketball Association is seeking to double the TV-rights fees it receives from ESPN majority owner Walt Disney Co.  and Time Warner Inc. 's Turner Broadcasting, as the league looks to lock up deals for nationally televised games in the coming months, according to people familiar with the matter, according to TheWall Street Journal.

Disney and Turner have eight-year contracts in place that run through the 2015-2016 season, but the companies are already in preliminary discussions with the league about extending their deals. Disney is currently paying about $485 million a year, while Turner's deal is worth $445 million a year. Given those terms, doubling the payments implies the new deals would be worth a total of nearly $15 billion for the NBA, assuming the length of the new deals remains eight years.

NBA team owners are meeting Tuesday to discuss TV-rights deals and other matters.

Under terms of the existing deals, the NBA cannot yet negotiate with other companies. If the league can't reach deals with Disney and Time Warner, it could open up a bidding process.

League owners and industry analysts are expecting a huge fee increase in the new deal. In recent years, the National Football League and Major League Baseball have cut media deals that are substantially more expensive than the contracts they replaced—in the case of MLB, more than twice as much.

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