An NBA request to seal its digital agreement between the league and Warner Bros. Discovery -- a key document critical to the NBA’s claim that WBD cannot match Amazon’s $1.93B streaming-only offer -- was denied by the N.Y. Supreme Court, pending the league filing a new motion to redact or seal particularly sensitive portions of the contract.
The NBA, with WBD’s blessing, had filed a motion in late August to seal the contract, which is a "Digital Rights Agreement" with Bleacher Report that governs Max’s ability to stream TNT broadcasts of league games. The NBA had brought the contract to the attention of the court because it is a separate agreement -- different than Turner’s media rights deal from 2014 -- that does not contain matching rights. Therefore, according to the league’s attorneys, WBD should under no circumstances be able to match Amazon’s digital package.
The NBA, in its August filing, had asked the court to seal the agreement because it contained trade secrets, proprietary business information and competitively sensitive information. But Judge Joel Cohen of the N.Y. Supreme Court ruled against the league, writing:
"Generalized assertions of confidentiality do not establish a compelling justification for the complete sealing that is proposed. While portions of the Digital Rights Agreement may include protectable confidential business information, Defendants have not made any attempt to isolate the specific portions of those documents that genuinely require redaction under the rigorous standards described above. Indeed, certain relevant portions of the Digital Rights Agreement are included in Defendants’ publicly filed memorandum of law (NYSCEF 40), thus indicating that there are portions of the agreement that do not require sealing."
Cohen wrote that the NBA has 21 days to ask for specific areas of redaction and will decide again at that time. In the interim, the judge has yet to respond to a league request to have the case dismissed at the early pleading stage.
