One of the central aspects of basketball is trash talk. Apparently, this has been part of the game since Dr. Naismith recorded his first peach basket in 1891 at Springfield College: If you talk the talk, you have to back it up.
That’s why the Warner Bros. CEO’s diss track Discovery’s 2022 David Zaslav is holding up the sudden ball between Zaslav’s TNT Sports and NBC for the latest NBA TV rights deal that’s still up for grabs. Two years ago, Zaslav dove into NBA commissioner Adam Silver’s league.
“We don’t need the NBA,” Zaslav, who reportedly earns nearly $50 million a year as an NBA star, said during an RBC investor conference.
Zaslav’s words struck a chord with Silver and NBA executives. This left Zaslav and TNT Sports fighting for their NBA lives with a Faustian choice.
Zaslav can show fiscal restraint and lose the NBA to NBC, puncturing TNT Sports in the process, or he can pay the asking price of $2.5 billion per season for a smaller package than he currently has, proving he needs the NBA.
Any deal with TNT or NBC is expected to include a conference final every two years, as opposed to TNT’s current setup for each season. Either network is expected to maintain the annual broadcast of the All-Star Game.
At this point, it seems clear that ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro and Amazon Prime Video chief sports executive Jay Marine and their bosses – who are already in the medal stand waiting for the third winner – have done a better job than than Zaslav and his main lieutenants.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal and confirmed by AtléticoESPN will pay $2.6 billion each season for the NBA Finals and conference finals, while Amazon Prime Video will host a conference final every two years and is expected to be in the $1.8 billion per year range.
Meanwhile, NBC is there, aggressively pursuing Zaslav’s deal. It’s a multifaceted corporate move from Comcast-owned NBC that would reunite the league with its Michael Jordan-era sidekick and the “Roundball Rock” theme song and comes with an already-defined one-two punch from Mike Tirico. and Noah Eagle.
David Zaslav in November. (Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for the New York Times)
While cable TV may be declining, Comcast is still in business. If Zaslav and TNT Sports no longer broadcast NBA games, Comcast could try to lower its subscription fee of about $3 a month. This could save Comcast millions.
Meanwhile, NBC is offering to put the games on its broadcast network where they can fit neatly after “Sunday Night Football” ends in early January. NBC also wants the NBA to support its subscription streamer, Peacock. And while not the starter, the NBA may prefer NBC as a teammate in this package.
Although TNT Sports has broadcast the NBA for nearly four decades, includes numerous employees with long-standing ties to the NBA, and boasts Charles Barkley and the iconic “Inside the NBA” studio show, NBCUniversal Chairman Mark Lazarus is the executive of media with the long term. relationship with the league.
From 1999 to 2003, Lazarus ran TNT Sports. During this period, the network hired Barkley, arguably the greatest sports studio analyst of all time.
Lazarus also developed strong relationships with Silver and NBA chief rights negotiator Bill Koenig.
At Turner, Lazarus rose to head Turner Entertainment, overseeing all of its programming from TNT to TBS. In 2008, however, he was fired.
He resurrected his career at NBC, where he now sits atop the NBCUniversal Media Group.
“Both NBC and I personally have a long history with the NBA dating back to my years at Turner,” Lazarus said at the IMG Summit last September. “It’s a wonderful product in the United States and around the world. It’s a really valuable product, it’s culturally relevant in a way that maybe some other sports aren’t – it speaks to multiple generations.
“So we’re intrigued by it, but we’re not incumbents and the process ebbs and flows as it happens.”
The process is ongoing and it is difficult to see how Zaslav will win. If he pays more to keep a smaller package, he will dishonor his words about not needing the NBA, even though he has since tried to backtrack a bit by professing his love for the league. If he loses the NBA, what happens to TNT Sports, even though he still has MLB, the NCAA Tournament, the NHL and NASCAR?
TNT’s NBA history is stellar, and many of the people who built it remain with the network, waiting by their phones to find out what the future holds. They are on the ground, while Zaslav is at the games.
During the New York Knicks’ first round playoff games, TNT showed Zaslav sitting courtside during his celebrity call. These things don’t happen by accident; Especially, and notably, on the evening of late April, the network’s exclusive rights negotiations window was closing.
TNT’s coverage is iconic because of all the memorable moments with Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith, Shaquille O’Neal and Barkley. But the words that might define this, if this is the end of an era, might belong to Zaslav, who, in the last resort, might also prove that those words were empty if he tries to stop NBC from completing the heist.
Zaslav misspoke, but Silver has the ball, and the commissioner can decide who he wants to take the final shot.
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(Key photo of the “Inside the NBA” team in Denver for the opening game of the 2023-24 season: Jamie Schwaberow/NBAE via Getty Images)
