LAS VEGAS -- NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said Tuesday night he expects the league’s aggregated streaming hub for local broadcasts to launch in time for the 2027-28 season, with sources telling SBJ that YouTube is a leading candidate to house the platform.
Following the collapse of Main Street Sports Group, 13 teams -- the Hawks, Hornets, Cavaliers, Pistons, Pacers, Clippers, Grizzlies, Heat, Bucks, T’Wolves, Thunder, Magic and Spurs -- will sign what amounts to one-year deals this coming season with a variety of outlets. The Heat, Pistons and Bucks have already formalized contracts with local OTA channels, while the remaining 10 teams will either choose a free TV template or a paywalled streaming service.
But that’s just for this coming season. For 2027-28, those 13 teams could be joined by the NBC RSN teams -- the Celtics, Warriors, Sixers and Kings -- as well as OTA teams such as the Jazz, Suns, Trail Blazers, Pelicans and Mavericks. That would give the proposed streaming hub more than 20 teams. Whether other teams join the hub -- such as the Lakers, who will earn rights fee of $199M and $209M the next two seasons -- depends on whether the league and its eventual streaming partner can come close to matching those numbers.
The more teams that join the hub, the bigger the rights fee a streaming service would likely pay to house it. Indications are League Pass -- which blacks out local games -- will still remain intact through Amazon. But the hub (although nothing is finalized) will be likely be geofenced, in that fans will have to go there to find their local home broadcasts, but won’t be able to watch other league games.
“In terms of local television, I feel we are making progress there, without being specific about some of the media companies who are demonstrating interest,” Silver said. “If you look at this lifecycle of the streaming companies and their interest in live sports, it was only a few years ago when some of those same companies were saying that didn’t make sense within their business models; that they didn’t really see an opportunity to acquire these kinds of sports rights. And then just jump a little bit, a few years later, and you see almost all of them now are very much engaged.
“... So again, it’s a long way of saying that I think the communal aspect, the community aspect of local sports is critically important in this country. It’s important for college sports. It’s important for professional sports, and I think the media companies, you know, with streaming leading the way, are going to see that value in the marketplace. So I’m even more optimistic than last we spoke about this that we are going to see solutions for the league.”
