Warner matches Amazon in NBA media rights deal, setting up legal battle

The high-stakes showdown could land the parties in court and keep the outcome of the NBA’s broadcast rights in limbo for the foreseeable future.

“We’re proud of how we have delivered for basketball fans by providing best-in-class coverage throughout our four-decade partnership with the NBA. In an effort to continue our long-standing partnership, during both exclusive and nonexclusive negotiation periods, we acted in good faith to present strong bids that were fair to both parties,” TNT, formerly known as Turner Sports, wrote in a statement.

“We look forward to the NBA executing our new contract,” TNT added.

An NBA spokesperson said the league received the WBD proposal and is reviewing it.

The NBA can either contest or accept the proposal, meaning TNT would simply take over Amazon’s deal. If the league contests it, as expected, WBD would have the choice to sue the league.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.

The NBA is poised to collect a monster windfall from ESPN, Comcast and Amazon in its new round of deals that would take effect after next season. According to media reports and people familiar with the deals, ESPN will pay $2.6 billion per year for the NBA Finals, among other games; Comcast, which owns NBC, will pay $2.5 billion for regular season and playoff games; and Amazon will pay $1.8 billion for a smaller package that still includes playoff games and some conference finals series. (TNT’s public statement did not specify that it was specifically matching Amazon’s deal.)

The league had an exclusive negotiating window with its previous partners, Disney-owned ESPN and WBD-owned TNT, that ended in April, and it has spent the past several months finalizing its new deals. But according to people familiar with the previous deals, those networks have what are known as back-end matching rights, which make it harder for a league or content provider to ditch a media partner.

How strong those matching rights are could be in contention. The NBA is hopeful that its terms with Amazon are different enough that WBD’s offer is not a true match. Amazon offers a streaming platform, and TNT is a cable network. And Prime Video has more subscribers than WBD’s streaming platform, Max. Inside TNT, meanwhile, there is belief that the distribution particulars are less important than Amazon’s financial terms, which it will match.

A person familiar with the negotiations said WBD has made several attempts to come to a new agreement with the league, including taking a smaller fourth package of games and also attempting to enlist Google’s YouTube to partner on a joint challenge to Amazon’s deal.

TNT has broadcast the NBA since 1989 and is the longest-running media partner for the league. It airs the venerable “Inside the NBA” pre- and postgame show, starring Charles Barkley, one of the most well-known personalities in sports media. Barkley has been critical of TNT after reports in recent months indicated the network would lose the NBA. “These people I work with, they screwed this thing up, clearly,” Barkley told “The Dan Patrick Show” in May.