NBA announces new six-year, $4.6 billion deals with ESPN-ABC, TNT; most games on cable

Posted 2:24PM on Tuesday 22nd January 2002 ( 23 years ago )

NEW YORK - The National Basketball Association announced Tuesday that it has struck a six-year, $4.6 billion TV package with ABC, ESPN and TNT that will shift most of the league's games to cable beginning next season. The two deals, with The Walt Disney Co. and AOL Time Warner, are worth a total of $765 million per year, a 25 percent increase from the league's $2.46 billion contracts with NBC and Turner Sports that expire after this season. It represents the smallest percentage increase in the NBA's TV rights fees since at least 1983. Since then, the league has more than doubled its national TV revenue three times and received a nearly 50 percent increase in the only other contract. Those previous deals were all for four years. "This is a very substantial increase in a turbulent marketplace. We couldn't be happier," NBA commissioner David Stern said. "It's relatively easy to go from $100 million to $200 million. But you necessarily begin to slow down on your rate of increase as your numbers get higher." While Turner Sports stays on as an NBA partner with TNT, NBC will drop pro basketball after 12 years. NBC says it lost more than $100 million each season in the most recent four-year deal, during which regular-season ratings dropped 35 percent. The network offered the NBA $1.3 billion for four years last month, prompting the league to look elsewhere. In the new packages, ESPN and ABC will pay about $400 million each year and TNT about $365 million, Stern said. ABC will air up to 15 regular-season games on Sundays -- less than half of NBC's coverage -- plus five early round playoff games and the NBA Finals. Coverage of the conference finals will move completely to cable, with ESPN and TNT each carrying one of those series each season. The All-Star game also moves to cable, on TNT. An as-yet-unnamed new cable channel -- a 50-50 venture between the league and AOL Time Warner -- will have nearly 100 games, all but two in the regular season. Stern said the new network should launch in the fall in about 30 million homes. He hopes that will be up to 80 million within six years. ESPN and ESPN2 will carry 75 regular-season games, with doubleheaders on Fridays and single games Wednesdays. ESPN, which telecast NBA games from 1982-84, will also have up to 17 early round playoff games. TNT gets 52 regular-season games, nearly all on Thursday nights, and 45 early round playoff games. TBS will no longer carry NBA games. The new deals also include Internet and radio rights, interactive and wireless services, and other offshoots. "We knew we were going to have to do a number of different agreements across all the different divisions of the networks to obtain the kinds of increases that we were able to," Stern said. ------

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