The market for rights to televised sports remains hot.
The National Basketball Association has announced renewal of television rights deals with ESPN and TNT worth around $24 billion.
The agreement, reported by The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, also includes a new online service from ESPN for live, regular-season games available to people without cable subscriptions. The deal starts with the 2016-17 season and runs through 2024-25.
The nine-year deal is reportedly worth almost three times as much per year as the league's existing deals, which expire in 2016.
The NBA agreements come just days after the National Football League announced the extension of its TV rights deal with DirecTV for $1.5 billion per year for its NFL Sunday Ticket service. That marked a 50% increase over the previous agreement. The NFL also has multi-billion-dollar agreements with CBS, Fox, NBC and ESPN.
The market for live televised sports rights has become extremely competitive in recent years as sports have stood out as popular in-the-moment content in the on-demand age. Other networks were expected to bid on NBA rights, which may explain the high renewal cost.
Hidden reason this NBA TV deal has such a high price tag for ESPN/Turner: by doing it now, kept FOX, NBC out in the cold.— Tim Bontemps (@TimBontemps) October 6, 2014
The influx of money will benefit owners as well as players under the league's revenue sharing and salary cap agreements.
I've talked to a few young players tonight about NBA's new TV deal. They are understandably ecstatic. Good time to be a young NBA player.— Alex Kennedy (@AlexKennedyNBA) October 6, 2014
The deal is the first under new NBA commissioner Adam Silver.
Adam Silver walking into the club tonight like pic.twitter.com/WfuJWu0Knr— Avi Saini (@AvikarSaini) October 6, 2014