While the main European clubs are debating these days the need to bring Dubai and its petrodollars into the Euroleague as a way to increase the competition’s income, the business of the NBA It does not stop growing. And it will do much more soon, according to the latest information coming from the United States. The reason is the beginning of contacts to sign a new television agreement, which will come into force when the current one expires after the 2024-25 season. The new contract will mean income for the NBA between 60,000 and 72,000 million dollars for nine yearsa real nonsense then multiplies by a figure between 2.5 and 3 what was received by the American League in the previous one, signed in 2014 and which came into effect in the 2016-17 campaign ($24 billion).
The news has been reported by journalist Tom Friend, from Sport Business Journal, according to whom last Saturday the preferential negotiation period with the television operators of the current stage opened, Disney y TNT. These two companies aspire to renew their agreement with the NBA on similar terms to the current ones but for a much higher value. The package would also include the newly created NBA Cup, the so-called ‘In-Season Tournament’, which starting next season will be renamed ‘Emirates NBA Cup’. The NBC network would continue to complement Disney and TNT with regular broadcasts at the state level during the ‘regular season’. According to Friends, the NBA and its current operators have the renewal agreement outlined at 75%.
the difference is brutal
The Euroleague earns 42 million on TV
The economic strength of the NBA contrasts with the economic limitations that basketball experiences in the rest of the world. The difference is abysmal, since in the worst case the NBA will take, with its new contract, around 6.7 billion dollars annually for its television rights when the Euroleague currently takes around 42 million euros annually for the same concept.
The difference is surprising both because of the American excessiveness and because of the European precariousness, which is understood a little better when knowing that countries like Germany or France do not want to pay a single euro for the television rights of their Euroleague teams.
However, the NBA’s future television contract will not be the highest for a global sports competition. The NFL of American football already receives 111,000 million dollars for 11 seasons (about 10,000 million annually).
Apart from Disney and TNT, in recent times platforms such as Netflix y Apple have shown their interest, although this seems to have deflated recently. Who is expected to bid, once Disney and TNT’s preferential negotiation period ends in mid-April, is Amazon.
But the company led by Jeff Bezos does not want the complete package, it only aspires to take the streaming rights for the United States. That may clash with the agreements with the local operators of each team, some of which could disappear if a contract is signed with Amazon.
Boost for wages
If the numbers that have come to light are confirmed, the players are going to make gold. And if the NBA does well, their contracts are bigger. This is how he picks it up the collective bargaining agreement, which guarantees that between 49 and 51 percent of the league’s income must go to salaries of its main protagonists.
In turn, this will be a blow to European basketball, whose clubs will find it even more difficult to compete to sign high-level players, even mid-level players. While in Europe income (and salaries) remain stagnant or with a very slight increase in the last decade, in the NBA they have skyrocketed. For example, the teams’ salary cap has gone from $63 million in the 2014-15 campaign to $136 million this season. And other, The average annual salary of an NBA player in the 1995-96 season was 2.2 million dollars and in the current season, 9.7 million.
Can you imagine how far these figures will skyrocket with a TV contract three times larger than the current one?
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2024-03-12 21:41:29
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