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The powers that be at Warner Bros. Discovery made it clear they intended to pursue every legal remedy at their disposal after TNT lost the rights to broadcast NBA games to Amazon, and the company wasted no time following through on that threat by filing a lawsuit against the league on Friday.
TNT has been broadcasting NBA games since securing the television rights all the way back in 1989, but this season, it became increasingly clear it was on the verge of losing them as rival companies began to gear up for what promised to be a pretty fierce bidding war.
This week, the NBA announced it renewed its deal with ESPN while resurrecting its relationship with NBC and welcoming a new partner into the fold in the form of Amazon, which bid $1.8 billion to secure TNT’s rights as it continues to bulk up its Prime Video offerings.
That was a pretty brutal development for basketball fans who found themselves grappling with the impending demise of Inside the NBA, and it apparently came as a surprise to TNT, which asserted it had exercised its contractual right to match Amazon’s offer only to be informed the NBA had decided to enter a new relationship.
Warner Bros. Discovery (which owns and operates TNT) hinted it was only a matter of time before they took legal action, and on Friday, they followed through on that threat by filing a lawsuit in a federal court in New York City that’s given us our first glimpse at the strategy they plan to harness in what seems poised to be lengthy, messy, and expensive battle.
The heavily-redacted lawsuit (which uses TNT and TBS interchangeably) asserts the NBA “has breached the Agreement and deliberately refused to honor TBS’s rights” and argues “TBS agreed to pay the same fees for the same games provided for in the Amazon Offer” under the provisions of the contract that was previously in place.
It bluntly states “The NBA had no right not to honor TBS’s Match. This should be the end of the story” while disputing the notion Amazon was able to differentiate itself due to its ability to stream games digitally, as Warner Bros. Discovery also operates Max, which offers the same service.
The primary goal of the lawsuit is to force the NBA to recognize TNT’s rights to extend its contract to the 2035-36 season, and if it’s unable to achieve that goal in a timely manner, its attorneys say they will also be compelled to seek monetary damages from the NBA for over the “irreparable harm” stemming from the dispute.
Let the legal games officially begin.
