
The National Basketball Association announced that their current agreements with Disney (DIS) and TNT (TWX) have been extended for another eight years, to go through the 2016 season. The existing contracts were due to expire this year.
The agreement adds the rights for their games to be distributed across increasingly popular digital platforms, which will inlude cell phones, along with the Internet.
As far as the television rights go, TNT will have games on Thursdays, ABC on Sundays and ESPN will have the Wednesday and Friday games.
ESPN will be able to broadcast up to 75 regular season games and 39 playoff
games. They will also be able to offer NBA content on their various digital outlets like ESPN Mobile TV and ESPN360.com. The company also has a provision to offer a package of international rights for studio and game broadcasts.
ABC will cover at least 15 regular season games and the finals games in prime-time.
TNT will offer 52 regular season games and up to 52 playoff games, depending on how long the series go. They also landed the rights to simulcast games on other digital platforms through their TNT OverTime service.
"What you are seeing is the movement of the rights to follow the fan and to enhance the fan experience for those who want to experience it all," George Bodenheimer, president of ESPN and ABC Sports and co-chairman of Disney Media Networks, said.
The deal will offer NBA basketball every day of the week, and with digital focus reach the younger male demographic which increasingly uses multiplatforms and short-form video as their main way of consuming sports media.
One thing showing how much advertisers like this is the online NBA video highlights spots were sold out almost immediately.
The deal is reportedly valued at around $7.4 billion, or $930 million yearly.







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