ESPN deal lets you stream live NBA games without needing TV service

The new contract runs through the 2024-2025 season, and will cost the companies about twice as much as they currently pay — now about $485M a year for Disney (at ESPN and ABC) and $445M for Turner (at TNT) — The Wall Street Journal reports. A formal announcement to extend the current deals, which expire in 2016, is expected today.

But the most intriguing twist is that the NBA will partner with ESPN to create an online service that will stream live games during the regular season, including to people who don’t subscribe to pay TV.

deadline.com
 
Reaction to the new NBA media rights deal
Oct 6 2014, 10:45 ET | By: Clark Schultz, SA News Editor [Contact this editor with comments or a news tip]

ESPN's new deal with the NBA will let it experiment with selling online access to "out of market" games outside of the traditional pay-TV bundle.
Though the initiative could take several years to take form, it will mark another small step toward a la carte programming for consumers.
Media analysts note the length of the contract between the NBA with Disney (DIS +0.7%) and Time Warner (TWX) effectively boxes out Fox (NASDAQ:FOXA) and NBC (NASDAQ:CMCSA) until past the 2024-2025 season.
On the pay-TV side, operators such as Comcast, Dish Network (NASDAQ:DISH), AT&T (NYSE:T), Cablevision (NYSE:CVC), Time Warner Cable (NYSE:TWC) and DirecTV (NASDAQ:DTV) have to fret over an online product competing with their sports packages which include NBA games.

http://seekingalpha.com/news/2016385-reaction-to-the-new-nba-media-rights-deal#email_link
 
Oh those 'salary caps' are gonna shoot through the roof. Currently, it's about $64m...it may shoot to somewhere around $88-95 million per team. Oh, and you WILL get a lockout. There is NO WAY the owner will be able to prove "poverty" then....
 

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