MUMBAI: When the National Basketball Association’s 2020-21 season tips off later Tuesday, Dec. 22, at 7:00 pm ET (Wednesday, 5:30 am IST), with the NBA reaching fans in 215 countries and territories in more than 50 languages, a significant player “missing in action” will be Sony Pictures Networks India (SPN).
SPN, host broadcaster for the NBA in this market for the last ten years, will not be televising the world’s premier basketball property for the first time since 2010 as the network and the league could not agree terms on a renewal.
When queried about NBA’s plans for the Indian market in the immediate to mid-term, in the light of this development, NBA Asia managing director Scott Levy had this to say: “India is a priority market for the NBA, and we are committed to making live NBA games and programming available to fans in India this season. Every NBA game is available in India live and on-demand on NBA League Pass, and we look forward to announcing additional distribution plans soon.”
Coming back to the rights renewal question, what SportzPower can reveal is that SPN did put an offer on the table, which was ultimately turned down. It is worth noting that in 2015, when the NBA extended its contract with SPN (then called Multi Screen Media Network) for another five years till 2020, the deal value was for a total of $22.5 million. SPN’s payout to the NBA in the last year of the contract, which ended on October 11, was $7.45 million.
With Sony out of the picture, could an agreement be possible with rival Disney, more so since the media behemoth’s subsidiary companies ESPN and ABC, along with Turner Sports, are the NBA’s US territory rights holders? SportzPower sees zero chance of that happening, the reasons for which would require a separate article.
That leaves OTT platforms like FanCode, Facebook Watch, Amazon Prime, all three of which currently have different India-territory sports media rights deals in play. Taking from Levy’s earlier comments, it is fair to presume that some level of talks are ongoing.
From discussions SportzPower has had on the topic with industry sources in the know however, it could well turn out that if it does not get what it sees as “true value”, the NBA will prefer to go it alone in this market and focus on building the salience of NBA League Pass among “true” Indian fans.
