Warner Bros. Discovery followed through on its threat to “take appropriate action” against the NBA for rejecting its broadcasting rights offer. On Friday, the media company sued the league after the NBA turned down its bid to match Amazon’s streaming package.
I feel like matching clauses should absolutely inherently obligate the league to accept a matching offer and they shouldn’t be able to pull stuff like “we think Amazon is a better partner” or whatever.
I think the weakest real point for TNT matching is the fact that Amazon is paying for several years up front. That’s a distinct, meaningfully valuable element, and if TNT can’t do it, saying they couldn’t match is legit.