The NBA season’s tip-off this week marks the end of an era—and the spread of a new conundrum.
Largely due to media rights timing, the hoops league will be the last major U.S. sport to join the party of exclusive games on streaming services when action debuts on Peacock and Amazon Prime Video. TNT Sports exiting the picture marks the clear termination of linear TV’s decades-long run as the default place to watch sports. The first stop. Home base. Every NBA game will be available on a streamer this year. You can’t say the same about the old way.
There’s an ongoing fight to become the next platform par excellence. A new, single hub for sports content could emerge. But right now, the result of that battle is further fracturing. Channel flipping has given way to app hopping. What previously required one subscription now takes many.
Look at the Minnesota Timberwolves, for example. Or at least try to. Over the next 10 days, Anthony Edwards will play his first five games on FanDuel Sports Network North (and NBA League Pass for those not in the Minny market), Prime Video, Peacock and ESPN. A typical cable subscription will only get you halfway.
Amazon offers a more cohesive experience for some NBA fans, given that users can add FanDuel Sports Network, Peacock and League Pass subscriptions within Prime Video’s platform. But the calculus is trickier when other sports enter the mix. Sunday Ticket lives exclusively on YouTube, while ESPN appears eager to pair MLB’s out-of-market offering with the NHL version already on its service.
Sports fans previously had something akin to a supermarket to shop in. Football in one aisle, basketball filling the next. Now we’ve gone back to a world of separate dairy, meat and produce purveyors—except in this case, each location’s offering rotates daily. ESPN serves up NFL on Monday and NBA on Wednesday, Amazon delivers them on Thursday and Friday, respectively.
Everyone recognizes the problem, even if solutions are harder to come by. The NBA has integrated tap-to-watch functionality across social media apps and other platforms, allowing fans to jump directly into the right streaming service for a given game. DirecTV, Roku, Spectrum, Xfinity and the like have built an assortment of sports-specific hubs, smart searches and personalized recommendation algorithms to get fans to their games. Contests on ABC and NBC meanwhile will be easily accessible for casual TV viewers. For the rest of us, it is at least getting easier to bounce between linear channels and streaming apps. But switching between games in real time is still a chore, to say nothing of trying to watch two games on different services at the same time.
Here’s a quick breakdown of where NBA content lives this year…
ABC/ESPN: The NBA’s incumbent broadcasting partner retained rights to the NBA Finals. During the regular season, it will primarily air Wednesday night games as well as weekend contests and the Christmas Day slate across ESPN and ABC. Select Friday night games begin in January. For the first time this season, NBA fans can watch all of ESPN’s games (including those on ABC) via a $30/month service.
NBC/Peacock: Returning to the NBA for the first time since 2002, NBC will carry a Tuesday night doubleheader, with East Coast and West Coast viewers often each getting a game on the broadcast network. Both will be available on Peacock. Peacock will have streaming exclusive games on Monday nights. NBC will also debut Sunday Night Basketball on Feb. 1. Peacock starts at $11/month.
Amazon Prime Video: Amazon will similarly go from Thursday Night Football to NBA action on Thursday nights beginning mid-season. It will own Friday nights until then, including NBA Cup contests beginning on Oct. 31 and leading up to the championship in Las Vegas on Dec. 16. Prime Video will also stream the Play-In Tournament, before everyone joins in to host parts of the playoffs. Prime Video is included with Amazon Prime, or available directly for $9/month.
In total, there will be 247 national regular season games on ABC, ESPN, NBC, Peacock and Prime Video, up from the 172 contests airing nationally last year. Regional sports networks will still carry the rest of each team’s slate, with NBA League Pass offering streaming access to those unable to view local coverage. NBA TV, now operated solely by the league, will also have 60 games on offer. League Pass, including NBA TV, starts at $110 for the season.
NBA TV and the NBA app also have a new show this year, The Association, which seems to serve a role somewhere between TV guide and live podcast keeping fans updated on action happening around the league. Free for fans viewing on digital platforms, it feels like a clear reaction to the fragmented state of sports broadcasting—an attempt to create a new first stop, at least for basketball.
But then again, fans might just opt for Instagram, TikTok and X (or somewhere even more nefarious), where flipping between content has never been easier.