NBA agrees to record-setting 11-year, $76 billion media rights agreement per reports

The NBA has agreed to a new media rights deal worth $76 billion across 11 years, sources tell The Associated Press.

Games will continue to air on ESPN and ABC, but NBC and Amazon Prime will feature NBA games as well. TNT Sports has five days to match one of the deals if it wants to continue to broadcast the NBA. The new deal goes into effect during the 2025-26 season.

The five-day clock begins once the NBA sends finished contracts to TNT.

This record-setting deal will reportedly ensure player salaries will continue to rise and change how fans can access games for the foreseeable future. The league’s salary cap is expected to rise at an annual rate of 10%, which is the maximum amount allowed by the most recent collective bargaining agreement set by the NBA and NBAPA.

Some of the NBA’s highest-paid stars could potentially be making roughly $80 million per season by 2030. When a new deal is made in just over a decade, those numbers could potentially keep climbing.

In 1998, NBA and Turner agreed to a $2.6 billion, four-year television rights deal that saw the annual salary cap sit at $30 million while the average NBA player made $2.5 million. In 2024, the average salary is well past $10 million — mainly because of how much these types of deals that the NBA has been able to secure throughout the years, growing each time it came up for renewal.

The previous deal was signed for nine years and worth $24 billion, a 216.667% increase.

Not only does that mean that players will be making money at a rate never before seen at the NBA level, but it also allows the possibility for the long-awaited NBA expansion now that the new CBA has been finished and the media rights deal is nearing completion.

Fans in cities like Las Vegas and Seattle have been expressing their interest in (re)acquiring a team. Kansas City has also been a city to watch, along with Montreal and Vancouver, among others. It’s unclear when the NBA could move forward with expansion talks, but it’s certainly moving its way up.

The league wrapped up with its 2023-24 season last month after the Boston Celtics won the 2024 NBA Finals. However, the Summer League is in full effect and league stars will be littered throughout the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris leading into the 2024-25 season.