NBA TV contract 2025 – 2036

A couple of years ago I wrote about NBA League Pass here. Some months ago it was announced the new group of companies that are going to take over the rights to broadcast the NBA during the next 11 years.

The territory is changing dramatically.

I have done a summary table to try to understand better the current and future scenario.

NBA League Pass

All the investments done in this vehicle continues making it to progress. The big change this time is that League Pass is not going to have a secondary role or exploratory role, it takes a primary role that is going to be operated by Amazon.

The journey of NBA League Pass is amazing in my point of view. They have built all these capabilities, they have provided the service and they have used for sure all this data to demonstrate Amazon that the potential growth is there.

To me, this gives the NBA 11 years to learn from this execution and position themselves to take over the exploitation of these services by themselves in 2037.

I would like to remind this map in the context of Spain, where League Pass co-lives with Movistar+. The main broadcaster (Movistar+) is the main vehicle that pays the bill. League Pass gives data about people that just want NBA and they do not want to pay for the whole package offered by Movistar+.

This territory in the context of the new contract looks like this: Amazon broadcasts the NBA through League Pass, and the local vendors disappear.

It’s interesting how this season (2024-25) NBA Spain has not renewed the contracts with some of the local collaborators they have (the magazine Gigantes and the podcast El Reverso). Probably this is because they do not need to grow in this last year, this is now the main duty for Amazon (which has the broadcasting rights in Spain).

The new map in the international landscape

In the existing contract there were 2 broadcasters: local and League Pass. In the new contract, there is only one: Amazon Prime. It’s important to highlight the Advertisement platform from Amazon has a strong challenge to scale their ability to exploit this business and they only have 1 year to define their go to market, rules of engagement and ensure agreements in all territories.

Gigantes and El Reverso will operate this year independently. They should work hard to make them attractive for Amazon. Amazon needs local collaborations to engage with the communities around them and accelerate the consumption of their new packages.

Despite the fact that they have not renewed their contract with NBA Spain, I believe that in the long term this is something positive, as they are going to be seen as independent actors in the game, and not as incumbents (here your relative position matters).

Movistar+ is out. I’m sure that they are trying to get some type of agreement as they did with Netflix to be the sole provider and avoid clients to stop their TV package subscription.

What’s next?

From here, I only have questions without answers:

• What is going to be the focus of the NBA during the next 11 years?
• How much focus are they going to give to the betting business (now operated by 3 gambling companies)?
• How is Amazon going to deploy their TV and Advertising capabilities?

As usual, any constructive feedback is welcome.