Warner Bros. Discovery ‘likely’ to try to match Amazon’s NBA package

As the NBA’s new media rights deal comes into focus, many have begun to consider how Warner Bros. Discovery will handle being on the outside looking in.

But according to a new report, WBD hasn’t given up its fight just yet, with The New York Times reporting that the media conglomerate is “likely” to attempt to exercise its matching rights on Amazon’s portion of the deal.

As previously noted, however, doing just that could prove tricky considering the potential vagueness of such contracts.

“Warner Bros. Discovery has the contractual right to match third-party offers. It is likely to try to match Amazon’s offer, according to a person familiar with the company’s thinking,” the Times‘ report reads. “But the N.B.A.’s lawyers are still trying to determine how the contract defines Warner Bros. Discovery’s matching rights, according to two people familiar with the negotiations, given that the company would want to show many of the games on TNT and Amazon would stream them on Prime Video. It is an issue complicated by the fact that when these contracts were written in 2014, the streaming of sports was in its infancy.”

Essentially, WBD will be arguing that it its willingness to match the financial terms of Amazon’s agreement meets the criteria for its contractual matching rights, while the NBA would argue that Amazon offers a non-monetary value as a platform that WBD can’t provide. The same could be said of the NBA’s reported rights package with NBC, whose status as both a network broadcast channel and streamer is obviously appealing to the league, beyond its rights fee.

While WBD does have the Max streaming service at its disposal, maintaining an NBA presence on TNT airwaves appears to be the company’s priority. But barring a victory in a legal fight — in which case it would find itself partnering with an unhappy league — or the NBA creating a fourth package for WBD, its efforts appear to be too little too late.

[The New York Times]