NBA Wants Billions More in Sports Deals: Media and Tech Firms Are Resistant

A recent New York Knicks/Los Angeles Lakers game. Photo by Adam Pantozzi/NBAE via Getty Images.

The NBA is one of the most popular sports leagues in the world. It also has high hopes for squeezing far more money out of media outlets in negotiations for future TV broadcast rights, in part because tech giants including Amazon and Google have told the league of their interest in streaming the games. According to two people who have recently spoken with the NBA, the league wants to triple its current revenue from TV deals.

It won’t be that simple.

Amazon, for instance, is interested in the NBA rights, say people who have spoken with the tech giant’s representatives, but it has no intention of overpaying for a high-priced NBA rights package, according to people familiar with its thinking. It recently signed a costly deal with the NFL, and Amazon representatives have privately told some sports league executives the company may hold off on getting locked into another decadelong and exorbitant contract while it waits to see whether the NFL deal is successful, one of the people familiar said.