{"id":804529,"date":"2026-07-16T00:20:36","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T00:20:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/804529\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T00:20:36","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T00:20:36","slug":"adam-silver-projects-launch-date-for-nba-media-hub-after-rsn-deaths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/804529\/","title":{"rendered":"Adam Silver Projects Launch Date for NBA Media Hub After RSN Deaths"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tNBA<\/a> commissioner Adam Silver<\/a> told a scrum of reporters in Las Vegas that he expects the league\u2019s local streaming<\/a> hub will be up and running by the time the 2027-28 season rolls around, with temporary arrangements in the works for the teams that had their existing in-market deals disrupted by the demise of the Main Street Sports RSNs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn terms of local television, I feel we are making progress there,\u201d Silver said Tuesday night during a Summer League session. <\/p>\n

While the commissioner wouldn\u2019t get \u201cspecific about some of the media companies who are demonstrating interest\u201d in partnering with the NBA on a long-term in-market distribution scheme, his subsequent remarks suggested that at least one of the top streaming services was in the running.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at the 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 [it] didn\u2019t make sense within their business models\u2014that they didn\u2019t really see an opportunity to acquire these kinds of sports rights,\u201d Silver said. \u201cAnd then just jump a little bit, you know, a few years later, and you see almost all of them now are very much engaged.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the NBA, the inflection point arrived when Amazon\u2019s Prime Video inked an 11-year, $19.8 billion<\/a> rights package in July 2024, for which the streamer picked up 66 regular-season games per cycle. While that\u2019s a global pact, Silver noted that many of the tech giants that only recently began snapping up broad distribution deals for live sports \u201care now seeing that value on the local level as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which is not to say that Amazon is as fired up about the prospect of getting into the local sports business as, say, Google\u2019s YouTube or ESPN<\/a>. As part of a recent three-year renewal<\/a> of its deal with Major League Baseball, ESPN secured the in-market streaming rights for six clubs (Diamondbacks, Guardians, Rockies, Twins, Padres and Mariners), although that arrangement isn\u2019t set to fully coalesce until the 2027 season. <\/p>\n

While ESPN has been mum about pursuing plans for a similar arrangement with the NBA, almost nothing is off the table as Jimmy Pitaro<\/a>\u2019s team continues to beef up the DTC platform<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As is the case with NBC and Netflix, ESPN\u2019s revamped MLB contract expires at the close of the 2028 campaign, whereupon commissioner Rob Manfred hopes to consolidate<\/a> all of its clubs\u2019 streaming rights into a package controlled by the league. <\/p>\n

The impetus for baseball to seize control of in-market games was accelerated by the demise of the Main Street Sports RSNs, which marooned nine MLB clubs. At the time of Main Street\u2019s shuttering<\/a>, the NBA\u2019s exposure to the RSN model was somewhat greater, with 13 teams suddenly in need of a new local distribution partner.<\/p>\n

Since the FanDuel Sports<\/a> Network RSNs went under, three NBA franchises (the Bucks, Heat and Pistons) have secured one-year contracts with local over-the-air TV stations. The remaining 10 teams are currently in talks with regional broadcast affiliates and streaming platforms such as DAZN and Victory+. All 13 of the teams impacted by the RSN implosion are expected to join the NBA\u2019s new digital hub in 2027, and at least five clubs with short-term OTA deals in place are also likely candidates to get in on the new distribution scheme.<\/p>\n

While Manfred has maintained that he prefers that each of the 30 MLB clubs will cede its local media rights to the league, Silver\u2019s plan for 2027 and beyond leans more on the carrot than the stick. Given the huge payouts realized by certain big-market NBA teams\u2014for example, the Lakers last season generated $192.1 million in rights fees via its legacy Spectrum SportsNet pact; under the final year of the deal (in 2031-32), escalators will have nudged the team\u2019s annual take to nearly $250 million\u2014it\u2019s unlikely that the league will be in a position to make a matching offer to its top-tier clubs.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the meantime, Silver anticipates that a flurry of one-and-done provisional arrangements will be hammered out before the new campaign tips off in October. \u201cWe\u2019ll cobble together a series of solutions for this season, but I feel good that we\u2019ll have something on a national basis for the following year,\u201d Silver said. \u201cI\u2019m even more optimistic \u2026 that we are going to see solutions for the league.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NBA commissioner Adam Silver told a scrum of reporters in Las Vegas that he expects the league\u2019s local…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":803502,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[23867,49,48,1161,282962,42953,459,282963,82,5131],"class_list":["post-804529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-adam-silver","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-espn","tag-fanduel-sports","tag-jimmy-pitaro","tag-nba","tag-rsns","tag-sports","tag-streaming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=804529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/803502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}