Warner Bros. Discovery has matched Amazon’s reported $1.8 billion-per-year bid for the next long-term NBA contract that includes regular-season and playoffs games, according to industry executives.

As part of its existing long-term deal with the NBA, Warner Bros. Discovery cited the right to match an offer made by a media company for the NBA’s new round of multiyear TV/streaming agreements, which starts up in 2025. 

WBD did not mention a company by name, but industry executives say it is targeting the Amazon proposed deal. In a statement, WBD’s TNT Sports group said: “We have reviewed the offers and matched one of them.”  

The company went on to say: “The league notified us of its intention to accept other offers for the games in our current rights package, leaving us to proceed under the matching rights provision, which is an integral part of our current agreement and the rights we have paid for under it.”

NBA representatives did not respond to Television News Daily inquiries by press time.

NBA has made preliminary 11-year-long deals with incumbent ESPN/ABC ($2.6 billion per year), NBCUniversal ($2.5 billion), and Amazon Prime Video ($1.8 billion), according to reports. The total package of all the deals is worth $76 billion.

WBD says its initial offers were rejected: “In an effort to continue our long-standing partnership, during both exclusive and non-exclusive negotiation periods, we acted in good faith to present strong bids that were fair to both parties.” 

Before the WBD's decision to match an offer, media analyst for LightShed Partners Richard Greenfield wondered whether WBD’s new deal would be accepted. 

“Amazon’s package is clearly written as a streaming-only package, whereas Turner [WBD] would want to use the content across linear cable networks (TNT) and streaming (Max). Suing the NBA would not be a great look for WBD as it pursues future sports licensing agreements.”

The TNT cable network has had NBA regular-season/playoff games since the channel launched in 1988. The Turner cable network group has had the NBA package since 1984.