The Only Thing Worse Than Having NBA TV Rights Is Not Having Them

NBC potentially offers the NBA billions, everyone's stock takes a hit

On Monday evening, the Wall Street Journal reported, “NBC Prepares $2.5-Billion-a-Year Bid to Pluck NBA Rights From TNT.”

Warner Bros Discovery (TNT) has the right to match any offer, but, as the WSJ story details, CEO David Zaslav has previously signaled towards prudence on the NBA rights expenditure. That makes sense, given that WBD has been hemorrhaging billions and the NBA, now with established superstars Steph Curry, LeBron James and Kevin Durant fading out, has arguably underperformed its current deal.

Speaking of hemorrhaging, NBC’s Peacock channel has lost $8.3 billion during the streaming wars and their NFL paywall experiment. And yet, parent company Comcast seems game to go big or go home here, throwing more billions at Adam Silver’s league.

As TV Grim Reaper put it:

The last hurrah of the cable bundle dependent networks over big sports rights is more interesting than I expected, as their survival imperative drives up the bids!

So what does the collective stock market think? I’d argue that Wall Street’s takeaway presented an amusing contrast, and a revealing paradox.