Warner Bros. Discovery’s final attempt at getting a piece of the three-way NBA media rights deal involving Disney/ESPN, NBCUniversal, and Amazon Prime Video was unsuccessful after the NBA denied their attempt to match Amazon’s bid.
Now that the media rights deal is officially official for all three involved platforms, each network has now offered more information as to how the deal will affect them. And for ESPN, the agreement will seemingly lead the way for a new studio show.
In a press release shortly after the deal became official, ESPN detailed that it has secured the rights to “expand its NBA studio coverage via new whip-around coverage.” Details about the potential new show are as follows.
“ESPN has secured the rights to expand its NBA studio coverage via new whip-around programming. The rights include the ability to establish coverage on Disney nights, starting with enhanced game access, player arrivals and interviews. Additionally, rights include highlighting live action from around the league with real-time highlights and live cut-ins. In addition to whip-around coverage of the night’s games, the show will also include segments focused on different aspects of basketball, including culture and fashion, player arrivals, produced features and breakdowns from ESPN’s leading analysts. ESPN will continue to air its NBA Countdown pregame show and its weekday studio show NBA Today.”
ESPN added that both NBA Countdown and NBA Today will remain studio shows on the network. So we could potentially see a much different cast of personalities on this new show depending on how the format looks and potentially overlaps with their longstanding studio shows.
As for who could potentially be a good fit for this new show, personalities like Tim Legler, Monica McNutt, and Chiney Ogwumike, the latter two appearing to be growing stars at the network, would seemingly fit in quite well with a show catered around whip-around coverage considering their basketball experience at a high level.
Legler has been rumored to be potentially working more as a game analyst in the future with the departure of JJ Redick. But this new studio show with increased in-game coverage in comparison to other ESPN studio shows could be another way for the network to utilize his analysis if they have another idea in mind to replace Redick.
Regardless, the decision to further increase their studio show coverage certainly makes sense. Especially when you consider how beloved Inside the NBA was for TNT.
Now Inside the NBA appears to be no longer after the 2024-25 season, at least not on TNT, there is certainly room for another studio show to replace it as the staple studio show of NBA coverage, whether that be NBA Countdown or this new show coming at ESPN.