In a move that should resonate across the NBA, the Suns and Mercury have extended their over-the-air broadcast deal with Gray Media through 2030 and have consolidated both team’s DTC apps under Gray’s control through an impending Arizona’s Family Sports App.

The development — which builds on owner Mat Ishbia’s decision three years ago to abandon a $36M RSN rights fee to increase his teams’ reach — is a likely eye-opener for the NBA teams that recently exited their FanDuel Sports Network deals with Main Street Sports Group and are looking for local broadcast solutions for 2026-27.

One of those franchises, the Pistons, has already signed a one-year OTA deal with Scripps Sports. And 12 others — the Hawks, Hornets, Cavaliers, Pacers, Clippers, Grizzlies, Heat, Bucks, T-Wolves, Thunder, Magic and Spurs — are deciding between the Suns’ free OTA blueprint and streaming services such as DAZN or Victory+.

“I didn’t really know how it would all play out,” Ishbia told SBJ when asked about his decision in 2023 to go OTA. “I knew it was the right thing for the fans. So that was the first thing — just do right by the fans and good things always follow… How did it play out differently than I expected? I actually thought more teams would follow sooner.”

The four-year extension follows a marked Suns viewership rise to 110,000 per game across the state this season — top four in the league. Since going OTA on Gray’s Arizona’s Family Channel 3 before the 2023-24 season, the Suns have increased their linear reach to about three million homes while the Mercury audience has grown 500%.

The renewal, according to Suns and Mercury CEO Josh Bartelstein, is “validation” of Ishbia’s original decision to ditch his RSN — with Bartelstein admitting: “There was uncertainty because no team had done it and there’s always risk in being first…Many [NBA] teams have called. They call myself, they call Dan [Costello, EVP and Chief Business Officer]. They ask, ‘What’s your model? How did you think about it?’ Our answer is always simple: ‘If you put the fans first, everything else will take care of itself.’ That’s the bet we made.”

The other current OTA teams are the Jazz (through Sinclair), Trail Blazers (Sinclair), Mavericks (Tegna/Nexstar) Pelicans (Gray) and now Pistons (Scripps). But industry experts believe, out of all of them, the Suns template is maybe the most lucrative due to Gray’s pervasive reach to all corners of the state.

“If you look at those broadcast station opportunities and models, the most advantageous scenario is when a team has a multi-station opportunity,” said Craig Sloan, CEO of Playfly Sports. “So you look at the Suns, where Gray owned multiple sticks in Arizona and was able to light it up so essentially every person in Arizona can watch the Suns on free TV. That’s a pretty advantageous scenario.”

Costello told SBJ earlier this month, in fact, that the Suns were only behind the Celtics, Warriors and Knicks this season in terms of impressions. “That’s pretty good company when you think about the size of our market from a TV household perspective,” he said. That’s one reason why the Suns are reportedly closer to recouping the $30-plus million rights fee they lost by exiting Main Street Sports Group (then-Diamond).

It seems like a prescient move now, considering Main Street has defaulted on all rights fees since December 2025 — while the Suns have made up much of their lost RSN revenue through national advertising from Playfly Sports and state-wide advertising handled in-house.

Sources, meanwhile, believe their template is particularly a fit for a team like the Hawks, which similarly has Gray stations across Georgia and the South and could be leaning toward an OTA or direct-to-distributor model. The success of the fledgling Atlanta Braves’ network is also predicated on audience reach from Gray.

Meanwhile, the Suns+ and Merc+ DTC apps had been less of a focus until now. Bartelstein said 90% of the Suns’ viewership this season was linear. But moving both apps into the single Arizona’s Family Sports App will create one-stop-shopping for streamers — and also be the first time NBA and WNBA teams have lived on the same DTC platform.

Customers can conveniently navigate to the Arizona’s Family app for all game streams or ancillary content, as Gray tries to better monetize the Suns’ and Mercury’s digital products. The app, for instance, will stream Mercury pregame, halftime and postgame shows, another first.

“I think this is a big reason why Gray Media and Arizona’s Family are betting big with us and going long,” Costello said. “They think they can grow that part of the pie because it is in one place. And we’re going to continue to focus on this idea of democratizing access to our games with free TV.”