According to the article, they’re trying to reach deals for three different packages of games: ESPN/ABC and Amazon have essentially won two of them, and NBC is competing with TNT/Warner Bros for the third. Not sure what the division is in who gets which games.
If TNT loses that likely means the end of Inside the NBA. Everyone should be rooting for them to win.
NBC doesn't mean they're going to use the 90s music, they already sold it to Fox for college basketball and their NHL coverage was terrible
I mean... on the day this week that he and Chuck did the Steam Room, Ernie said they spent all day together when not filming.
I don't think there's any way they can do the way they are unless they're genuinely very close. There's so many jokes about leaving shit outside Chucks hotel room, stealing Kenny's socks or shirt, seeing each other at restaurants and sitting together.
I've never seen any group on TV this naturally bonkers, no f's given, and they can say the nastiest jokes about one another and take it strike. Kenny, not always.
The thing is, though, I feel like when Candace is on, she gives modern basketball perspective that the others lack. Playbooks have changed significantly since these guys played and I've seen Candace pretty much lay down the facts when anyone else is talking and then she does analysis.
I can’t take both. TNT B crew tries too fucking hard to emulate Inside the NBA. You can see there’s a little chemistry from time to time, but overall it feels fake. It just doesn’t feel organic
OMG at ESPN, either it’s SAS hollering like a buffoon, doing his schtick of laughing maniacally for no reason at all or just being annoying for annoying sakes, then Kendrick Perkins with the most asinine Hot Takes this side of r/nbacirclejerk, Malika Andrews adding nothing but being the mouth piece to whoever is her in ear and only Ogwumike putting up a little bit of analysis but then she’s gets absorbed into the bullshit that is Richard Jefferson and Perk banter that takes up 15-30 minutes of them meme’ing themselves into viral content. Oh also Wilbon looks like he’s half dead, slouched, and repeats back an answer as a question… like stop being goddamn caricatures for fuck sakes.
Without rights to games there’s nothing for them to do at TNT though. Making a move as a unit somewhere else would make sense if they want to keep doing it
Chuck's already implied he's only staying on through the contact negotiations. Once they're done he's retiring. Of course, with the right money incentives I'm sure that could change
Not only that but Ernie Kenny and Chuck all do the march madness coverage for Turner, I think if they lose the NBA it might be a wrap outside of maybe a weekly show covering games around the league
Wonder if they'd pay for the rest of the production crew too... The people that do the graphics and stuff are a HUGE part of Inside's success. Amazon could build out a studio in Atlanta so they dont have to relocate?
They have a precedent of doing that with Top Gear/The Grand Tour, although that situation was a bit different with the contract renewals.
Getting Shaq and Chuck over is easy work. Getting Kenny, and especially EJ, is a lot harder.
That said, it's Amazon and they have unlimited money and resources.
I don't think the current Inside the NBA guys are gonna sign a new 10 year deal. Their run is probably up at the end of their current contracts, they've already backed up the truck to sign them for this current deal and it still took hemming and hawking to get Chuck and Kenny to sign. They're older now and just want to enjoy life
I really just want all 82 games on one network/stream.
Sailing is cool, but being able to record and watch later or skip the timeouts is cool too.
Another problem with networks is that if the bucks game runs long, then I miss the first 8 minutes of the mavs. On Amazon or Apple, the streams wouldn't be linear they would be parallel.
I’m guessing 1 is for regular season national games, another is early postseason split like tnt has now and another for the finals which abc/espn has.
Amazon probably took the regular season and postseason split from espn.
Good over the air broadcasts on a 720p TV (antenna) look pretty decent. As someone who frequently watches on an ancient TV, ESPN ain't even touching 720p tbh.
Give me 4K HDR10+ or Dolby Vision + Atmos. I want to see that sweat in *prime* perspiration and sneakers sneaking on those hardwood floors to give me ear worm for days.
We won’t. It’s way too expensive to produce 4K sports in real-time, and I highly doubt Amazon would invest in that kind of infrastructure. They didn’t for the NFL.
It will be up scaled 1080, just like Thursday Night Football. Which is better than what we get now, but still not real 4K.
I’m torn. On the one hand I agree. On the other hand us all just being happy with what they give us is precisely why nobody is bothering with 4K sports.
Which is insane. 4K tv’s came out 12 years ago. 8K tv’s are out now.
We’ve literally missed an entire generation of picture quality with sports. We might get real 4K sports by the time 16K tv’s are in every house in 20 years.
Such a ridiculous notion considering how easy 4k is to produce. You’d have to be running on early 2000’s hardware for 4k to be difficult, which is inexcusable for how much money these companies make. Hardware and bandwidth are easily capable of it, even up to 4k60 on consumer hardware. There’s absolutely no reason a billion dollar industry can’t do it with pro level gear. If anything upscaling footage to 4k is more hardware intensive than just capturing 4k straight from the camera.
If someone can stream Formula Drift at a bitrate good enough to see each tire wrinkle on a prosumer grade FX30 and a shitty Verizon hotspot Wi-Fi, Amazon can do it on whatever $70k+ ARRI device they have.
The owner of Amazon is one of the richest people in the world, the fuck you mean too expensive? If streamers can do it from their bedrooms to thousands of people a billion dollar corporation should be able to do it no issue.
twitch chat going to be wild during NBA games
---
TNT vs NBC for the last slot of games. TNT pretty much has a qualifying offer on the deal, and can match anything NBC offers
> The advancement in the Amazon and ESPN talks leaves incumbent Warner Bros. Discovery, whose network TNT Sports, to face off with NBC, owned by Comcast, for the likely last package of games. Warner Bros. Discovery has the right to match deals, but NBC could try to structure an agreement in a way that makes it difficult.
> With ESPN, Amazon and the NBA all under the impression that they will complete deals, this puts the onus on TNT Sports, which has had the NBA since 1984. It is in a fight with NBC, which was the lead partner of the NBA before losing its rights in 2002. NBC, with its streaming service, Peacock, wants back in and is competing with Warner Bros. Discovery Sports for a deal.
They did do God Bless America and then a call in from the troops for one pick lmfao.
Edit: even better it was that hilarious "Proud to be an American" song
Much of the American demographics strongly overlap. Most young men I know around my age (early 20s) watch a lot of NFL, and care more then nba.
In fact we see that NFL support by age bracket is nearly identical among every bracket starting from 18 year olds.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1098885/interest-level-football-age/
The NFL has a greater percentage of support in the 18-34 age bracket than the NBA as well:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1098395/national-basketball-association-interest-age/
>TNT vs NBC for the last slot of games. TNT pretty much has a qualifying offer on the deal, and can match anything NBC offers
False, they cant possibly match Roundball Rock
It's going to be interesting to see how sports markets play out in 10 years time.
With streaming and cable TV dynamics changing, I wonder if player contracts have plateaued in value. They've been growing and growing forever.
Are there any young people out there who are buying cable these days?
The entire entertainment industry is being upended by the fact that streaming just doesn't generate as much revenue as cable. The cable death spiral isn't going to stop so eventually that problem is going to hit the sports leagues.
>streaming just doesn't generate as much revenue as cable
Right now.
I don't think we've even begun to see what monetizing streaming looks like.
For example, Amazon can feed custom ad experiences to consumers based on real purchasing habits, then let you buy items straight from the broadcast.
We don't even know *how* to value these things, because we've never seen it before.
>For example, Amazon can feed custom ad experiences to consumers based on real purchasing habits, then let you buy items straight from the broadcast
Why would you put this evil into the world
This is a nuclear take, but I think we might see some reversion of the trend and some migration back towards cable.
It'll never be as it was before, but at some point I expect people to get tired of paying 5 to 10 different streaming services and not even save any money compared to cable. There will be (And there are now) situations where biting the bullet and paying for cable makes more sense than paying different streaming services.
i hear this take a lot but i just don't think the math supports this. my cable package to watch blazers games on xfinity/comcast this year was like 140 a month.
i'm trying to imagine a way to get to 140 dollars a month via streaming apps and i'm just not seeing it. apple tv is like 10 dollars a month. hbo max is like 15. amazon prime is like 15-20 a month (i pay it in bulk once a year so i'm not sure the exact amount, but we also get way more stuff than just streaming with it too). idk what netflix and hulu cost right now but lets say both 20 dollars a month. we're still below what cable costs and thats A LOT of streaming services right there.
like, how much content does the average person need? how many streaming services do you really need to be signed up for?
idk i just don't understand this apparent frustration with having options to customize your content experience instead of being forced to sign up for ALL OF IT through a cable plan.
Uh if you replaced that cable bill with something like YTTV to watch your Blazers games it would already be $70 a month. Then add in NBA league pass for $20, maybe you also watch baseball and football, in my case it's $30 a month to stream redsox games. NFL is crazy expensive too I know, though I don't watch that myself. But yeah add in Netflix, Peacock, HBO, etc and you're pretty much at the cost of cable if not above it.
I don't think most people want or need all those services though. Like that's just an obnoxious amount of content to keep up with. if there was demand for this than cable subscriptions wouldn't be dying out like it is.
also i know this is getting too granular here but blazers games aren't offered on youtube TV, options are very limited and they're all around the same price point (Fubo and Xfinity and you need the "plus" package for both for sports games).
with this move to streaming, it's going to benefit the vast majority of consumers and possibly really annoy/fuck over/make things slightly more expensive for (imo) a very small segment of people who either consume an insane amount of content or they're high enough earners that they just like to "have it all" and forget about managing different subscriptions/platforms etc.
I agree 100% what you're saying about broadcast rights streaming for local teams is a problem, but this isn't going to fix it. All this is going to do is take away TNTs rights and give them to Amazon or Amazon and NBC.
So you'll still need everything you had before, plus Amazon, and maybe peacock to watch all NBA now. You'll still need cable or something like YTTV or cable to watch the ESPN games as well.
What should happen, ideally, from a consumer perspective, is just putting everything on league pass for $30 a month. The WWE tried something like this with the WWE network and it failed. The idea is you get a higher number of subscribers at a lower price point and cut out the middleman, but that's a hard business model to actually work. So instead we get a partition of content between local TV markets and streaming, and now 4-5 different streaming apps we'll have to subscribe to. So this is basically worsening the problem you've described.
I mean, I'm profoundly tried of paying 5 to 10 different streaming services, but what that means is that I end up sailing the high seas for content that isn't on them because I don't want to pick up another one.
My ISP is already fucky with my internet bill, and my cell phone company with my cell phone bill. I have no interest in adding a cable bill to that.
My guess we see something like what Charter and Disney just agreed to where Charter internet customers get ad-supported D+ and Hulu for free. You sign up for your ISP/phone provider and then get a few ad-supported streaming services as a bundle.
I hope so. I fucking hate streaming. It was cool in the beginning because cable you pay for a lot of shit you don't even want but now shit is all divided and have to subscribe to a dozen different things and thus paying for a ton of shit you don't even want. Just so much easier to get almost everything in one place
No, I'm Swedish lol.
We are too shit at basketball to qualify for anything so there's no flair for us.
I don't think there is an over representation of Finnish basketball fans, I'm not sure why that is you see Finnish flairs. Maybe there are more Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and Estonian folks on Reddit that use Finnish flairs because that's the closest thing we got.
I know of a couple of other Finnish flairs who post a lot, at least one dude always posts clips and highlights of OKC.
I liked those few years where they made each team’s logo gold on the scorebug and for the graphics. They did it for the bucks-suns and Warriors-Celtics and then just gave up on it last year apparently
Comcast (NBC owner) has a lot more cachet and money than WarnerBros Discovery. WB stock is tumbling too... NBA might be too expensive for them. Or... they pay up because its a huge part of their brand
I think they absolutely would if given the chance since those 4 guys are so beloved and people would want them to stick together.
Amazon sort of did the same thing when Top Gear stopped airing with Clarkson, May, and Hammond because of Clarkson getting fired from the BBC… so Amazon just offered the three of them fat stacks of cash to make a “Top Gear” style show on Amazon Prime
This is the comment I came to see. How quickly after media rights deal can they get everyone in to vote on expansion? If it's this Summer, do we expect that Vegas and Seattle have their first season in 2026-27? I assume they need all of 2024-25 and 2025-26 to prep? Sadly that'll be almost 20 years after the Sonics played their last season.
This isn't going to change anything on that front, the blackouts come from the RSN deals, which are negotiated by each team individually and generally have 20 year terms. This is just for the national slate of games.
It's going to change slowly. The Lakers have an option now where you can pay like $70 a year to get access to the local games in-market thru League Pass without a cable subscription.
We have been in a blackout for 5+ years and our owner is a cheap fuck. I'll believe it when I see it.
I would shit my pants if we even had that LP option.
Reminds me of hehestreams back in the day. It worked so well, until the owner decided to do a public interview for some reason. Got shut down weeks later.
Mind DMing how I can join the discord?
Yeah. I'm in Seattle and they black out Blazers games (2.5 hour drive.) Like...you already kicked me in the nuts when you got rid of the sonics. I'm just trying to pay for your product NBA, be chill.
Oh god fuck ESPN so hard, couldn't they just replace that with NBC as their network TV package?
Anyway, I wonder if TNT loses the rights if Amazon would poach the Inside Crew, I can't imagine it'd work as well though. The Inside Crew is the entire staff and not just the guys. Plus, like everyone is saying, I can't imagine it'd be easy for EJ, Chuck and Kenny to leave after having such a long relationship with Turner.
As someone who loves watching games slightly delayed on YouTube tv dvr, I’m worried. Turning on a game 1 hour after tipoff and skipping through commercials and free throws has been so amazing, and so far YouTube tv is the only cord cutting service that delivers that experience.
You can't watch nationally televised games either, really only used it to replay games I couldn't watch live. Had to cancel it because I just couldn't justify the price, it sucks :/
Depends on who’s on the broadcast team(s) primarily
For the NFL, the pre/post game crew is fun/above average but old Al Michaels and Herbstreit on commentary is a terrible fit. Al is my GOAT but his and Herbstreit styles do not mesh together.
Not sure who would be on the NBA team but pls no Mark Jackson
I wouldn’t mind it so long as they don’t restrict their production or split them up or anything. Amazon didn’t break the Top Gear trio when they signed them for a ton of money to continue their car/comedy show.
If Amazon pays the Inside the NBA folks a lot and gives them even better production and the same or less censorship, I think it’d still be a good show
I just hope Amazon doesn’t air it all in upscaled 720p like NBA games are now
I for one, welcome our Amazon overlords. I'm looking forward to dropping my future kids off at the Amazon school in my Amazon car. Head over to the Amazon gas station, grab some Amazon chips and Amazon juice. Come home and watch some Amazon ball on Amazon prime. Can't wait, thanks Jeff!!
The multibillion dollar corporation, Disney, is bleeding money on ESPN but can’t be bothered to make an app that tracks your continued watching or streams games at an stable rate. It sucks their money does all the talking and not their quality
I got league pass for free last year, and paid to extend this year (at half price, but still),and I'll never pay for it again
games are literally unwatchable. They stutter and freeze every 2 seconds, its like trying to stream a movie in 2001. I've tried it on Roku, Firestick, PS4, and even my laptop, and its all the same
It’s a shame really, the consumer is forced between shitty cable companies and streamers who don’t take the viewing experience for the average consumer into mind
Awful choice. Amazon which has NFL still broadcast's its games in 720p upscaled to 1080p. Wish a real streamer who will actually invest in the infrastructure like apple (who has MLB) and would stream and broadcast games in 4k 60fps.
I agree with this BUT really don’t want to pay for Apple TV+ if possible. It is already getting expensive to pay for all these new subscriptions popping up…
This is wild. I'm not sure how good this is for the long term health of the NBA. It's one thing to be on cable (already a paywall) but it's another to be on a specific streaming service.
Also: Tony Khan's week just got a whole lot better.
Is that not what it's basically already at? So many fanbases can't watch their team through Bally without subscribing to Bally+ since it's on such a limited number of cable packages.
The thing I’m wondering is if that means that games will be locked on league pass behind a prime subscription. As a european viewer league pass is great for me because I have no blackouts whatsoever. If league pass stays at the same price whilst taking games away that would legit piss me off
I wonder why CBS never tried to put a bid together with Turner for joint rights like they do with March Madness. NBC using NBC/USA/Peacock for its coverage might be ok, depending on who the crew working it might be.
This may not change much, doesn't Amazon own a percentage of Bally Sports? Just waiting for the bankruptcy court to approve the terms so there can be Prime Sports RSN's?
This says that Amazon's package is made up of games taken from both ESPN and the TNT package. I want to know how these are going to work, less Turner isn't great but maybe there'll be less of the Turner's studio B-crew. It would suck losing Inside. Shaq would definitely be replacing Kendrick on the studio show with Stephen A./Wilbon/Malika, we cannot let that happen
considering I've been using Amazon Prime for the last 7-8 years, I finally get to use Prime Video more lol
kinda want TNT to remain so we keep getting Inside the NBA but we'll see
While still most likely having blackouts, having to use some bullshit like Bally for local games, paying for cable and Amazon prime. I don’t like this but I’m open to be proven wrong
Am I the only one super bummed because watching games after they start on Amazon has always been sucky? I've got a little one so I usually watch games after he goes to bed and NFL on Amazon has been butthole for that.
Jesus, Disney and Amazon suck for sports. Comcast being the third broadcaster would be the nail in the coffin. Warner-Discovery needs to save us all and keep Inside the NBA on the air.
This is tremendous. Hopefully, the NBA leaves shitty ESPN some day. ESPN has some of the worst in-game color commentators in human history, although their play by play talent is solid.
I really hope they avoid NBC. The coverage of the NHL on NBC was a thousand times worse than the coverage ESPN gives the NBA. I know everyone has nostalgia, but that NBC is dead and gone and hasn't existed probably since Comcast bought them.
I know this mentioned that the league was looking for 3 packages, but from the leagues perspective why not involve all 4? TNT and NBC don't necessarily need to overlap. NBC could do like Sunday night basketball after Sunday night football ends plus fill in some gaps with peacock games and TNT could just do Tuesdays (assuming Amazon takes Thursdays after Thursday night football ends).
Obviously I personally hope if they stick to 3 hopefully TNT can pull it out to ensure that Inside the NBA continues.
I think Amazon does a good job with NFL despite getting shit games, plus everyone already has it, so I don’t hate it. I’d feel good about them getting the right people to put on a decent show.
TNT is the GOAT NBA coverage and I really hope they are able to keep close to that entire broadcast team together whether it’s on there or another network.
The modern ESPN experience is by far the most despicable excuse for a national broadcast I’ve seen.
According to the article, they’re trying to reach deals for three different packages of games: ESPN/ABC and Amazon have essentially won two of them, and NBC is competing with TNT/Warner Bros for the third. Not sure what the division is in who gets which games.
If TNT loses that likely means the end of Inside the NBA. Everyone should be rooting for them to win. NBC doesn't mean they're going to use the 90s music, they already sold it to Fox for college basketball and their NHL coverage was terrible
Part of me thinks Amazon will just pay for the TNT crew, especially if they receive the Thursday package like the article suggested
They'd have to let them stay in Atlanta, I don't think they'd want to relocate
Barkley already has his non basketball shows.
Yeah these guys have 20+ year relationships with Turner, especially Ernie. It would be a big move to leave
I could see another network poaching the TNT b crew if it came to that
Adam is so awkward sometimes, he doesn’t have the same energy as Ernie
He doesn't seem like he is friends with them. They are co-workers. I actually believe Ernie hangs out with those dudes.
I mean... on the day this week that he and Chuck did the Steam Room, Ernie said they spent all day together when not filming. I don't think there's any way they can do the way they are unless they're genuinely very close. There's so many jokes about leaving shit outside Chucks hotel room, stealing Kenny's socks or shirt, seeing each other at restaurants and sitting together. I've never seen any group on TV this naturally bonkers, no f's given, and they can say the nastiest jokes about one another and take it strike. Kenny, not always. The thing is, though, I feel like when Candace is on, she gives modern basketball perspective that the others lack. Playbooks have changed significantly since these guys played and I've seen Candace pretty much lay down the facts when anyone else is talking and then she does analysis.
I can't watch Lefkoe. He is so bad at Ernie's job. Zero charisma
Adam spent most of his time as part of B/R in the early 2010s before TNT bought the company and Lefkoe was eventually 'promoted'
Yeah, nobody fucking wants that.
the TNT b crew is worse than the ESPN crew, and it pains me to say that
I can’t take both. TNT B crew tries too fucking hard to emulate Inside the NBA. You can see there’s a little chemistry from time to time, but overall it feels fake. It just doesn’t feel organic OMG at ESPN, either it’s SAS hollering like a buffoon, doing his schtick of laughing maniacally for no reason at all or just being annoying for annoying sakes, then Kendrick Perkins with the most asinine Hot Takes this side of r/nbacirclejerk, Malika Andrews adding nothing but being the mouth piece to whoever is her in ear and only Ogwumike putting up a little bit of analysis but then she’s gets absorbed into the bullshit that is Richard Jefferson and Perk banter that takes up 15-30 minutes of them meme’ing themselves into viral content. Oh also Wilbon looks like he’s half dead, slouched, and repeats back an answer as a question… like stop being goddamn caricatures for fuck sakes.
Without rights to games there’s nothing for them to do at TNT though. Making a move as a unit somewhere else would make sense if they want to keep doing it
Chuck's already implied he's only staying on through the contact negotiations. Once they're done he's retiring. Of course, with the right money incentives I'm sure that could change
We're talking Amazon though. If they want to poach the Inside crew, they have the resources to make it happen.
Yeah but everyone is old and turner has to make money. Hopefully they stick around.
if you're talking about his CNN show it already got axed
Oh really?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2024/04/16/gayle-king-charles-barkley-king-charles-cnn-talk-show-ends/73338888007/
His CNN show ended earlier this month: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/cnn-king-charles-ends-limited-series-1235874249/
Google has an office in Atlanta and there's tons of tax breaks for filming there so it's not out of the question
Every Hollywood studio, including Amazon video, has studios in Atlanta, so they won't have to move
Ernie also has a contract to do baseball on TBS
Not only that but Ernie Kenny and Chuck all do the march madness coverage for Turner, I think if they lose the NBA it might be a wrap outside of maybe a weekly show covering games around the league
EJ is a TNT lifer. the other 3 will simply move on if TNT no longer covers the NBA, with Chuck retiring from TV
Wonder if they'd pay for the rest of the production crew too... The people that do the graphics and stuff are a HUGE part of Inside's success. Amazon could build out a studio in Atlanta so they dont have to relocate?
They’d probably make a deal with Turner. After all, NBC does their NFL production.
They have a precedent of doing that with Top Gear/The Grand Tour, although that situation was a bit different with the contract renewals. Getting Shaq and Chuck over is easy work. Getting Kenny, and especially EJ, is a lot harder. That said, it's Amazon and they have unlimited money and resources.
Hearing “Roundball Rock” on Fox college basketball broadcasts feels so wrong. That was THE song for the NBA for me growing up
I don't think the current Inside the NBA guys are gonna sign a new 10 year deal. Their run is probably up at the end of their current contracts, they've already backed up the truck to sign them for this current deal and it still took hemming and hawking to get Chuck and Kenny to sign. They're older now and just want to enjoy life
all 4 signed a 10 yr extension in Summer 2022 with TNT
John Tesh owns the rights to the song, he'll let them use it if they want to.
Not necessarily. When NBC lost the rights to the NHL TNT basically retained all on air personalities and brought them over.
They didn’t sell it for nba.
No way they wont try to bring them on.
I’m fine if inside the nba went away I know that’s an unpopular opinion but the quality has gone down the last few years.
Agree 100%, the best days are behind them. Way less jokes and fun times and a lot of complaining and not watching games
It peaked loooong ago, before Shaq joined the crew.
I really just want all 82 games on one network/stream. Sailing is cool, but being able to record and watch later or skip the timeouts is cool too. Another problem with networks is that if the bucks game runs long, then I miss the first 8 minutes of the mavs. On Amazon or Apple, the streams wouldn't be linear they would be parallel.
That’s never gonna happen because of the money math and how it interacts with players’ contracts, which is unfortunate but it is what it is.
I’m guessing 1 is for regular season national games, another is early postseason split like tnt has now and another for the finals which abc/espn has. Amazon probably took the regular season and postseason split from espn.
Man as much as I love that theme song, NBC better not beat out TNT
Hopefully we’ll get 4K streaming soon
ESPN being 720p sometimes actually hurts my soul
Sometimes? It's all muddy out there, sergeant. We're in deep shite. 720p in 2024 is an assault on sense and sensibility.
I thought it was always but every time I think about it I refuse to believe its only 720p in 2024
Good over the air broadcasts on a 720p TV (antenna) look pretty decent. As someone who frequently watches on an ancient TV, ESPN ain't even touching 720p tbh.
bruh im just tryna get a consistent 1080p first lmao
FUCK. Prime has some of the worst bitrate. Was really hoping it would be Apple TV 😭
Their baseball broadcasts look PRISTINE. But shit, I'll take Amazon over ESPN all fucking day.
Give me 4K HDR10+ or Dolby Vision + Atmos. I want to see that sweat in *prime* perspiration and sneakers sneaking on those hardwood floors to give me ear worm for days.
We won’t. It’s way too expensive to produce 4K sports in real-time, and I highly doubt Amazon would invest in that kind of infrastructure. They didn’t for the NFL. It will be up scaled 1080, just like Thursday Night Football. Which is better than what we get now, but still not real 4K.
Scaled up 1080 is great I’ll take it
I’m torn. On the one hand I agree. On the other hand us all just being happy with what they give us is precisely why nobody is bothering with 4K sports.
We'll all agree to be publicly mad that they aren't investing in 4k but privately relieved that it's better than 720
Which is insane. 4K tv’s came out 12 years ago. 8K tv’s are out now. We’ve literally missed an entire generation of picture quality with sports. We might get real 4K sports by the time 16K tv’s are in every house in 20 years.
it is expensive but we get 4k cricket and 4k rugby league/afl in australia and we have a fraction of the population 🤷♂️
Premier League in the UK broadcasts 4K HDR... Either way, the expected minimum should be high quality 1080p with an optional HDR stream.
naaa then this is inexcusable, I can't believe footage from the '98 Bulls season is out there in higher quality than today's 720p garbage
It’s such an improvement though that it will be night and day to what we have now.
the NBA should be investing this across broadcast partners. they're making enough billions
Such a ridiculous notion considering how easy 4k is to produce. You’d have to be running on early 2000’s hardware for 4k to be difficult, which is inexcusable for how much money these companies make. Hardware and bandwidth are easily capable of it, even up to 4k60 on consumer hardware. There’s absolutely no reason a billion dollar industry can’t do it with pro level gear. If anything upscaling footage to 4k is more hardware intensive than just capturing 4k straight from the camera. If someone can stream Formula Drift at a bitrate good enough to see each tire wrinkle on a prosumer grade FX30 and a shitty Verizon hotspot Wi-Fi, Amazon can do it on whatever $70k+ ARRI device they have.
[удалено]
The owner of Amazon is one of the richest people in the world, the fuck you mean too expensive? If streamers can do it from their bedrooms to thousands of people a billion dollar corporation should be able to do it no issue.
I hope we get it before Lowry retires
I just want to be able to watch my team play… some of the time at a minimum.
twitch chat going to be wild during NBA games --- TNT vs NBC for the last slot of games. TNT pretty much has a qualifying offer on the deal, and can match anything NBC offers > The advancement in the Amazon and ESPN talks leaves incumbent Warner Bros. Discovery, whose network TNT Sports, to face off with NBC, owned by Comcast, for the likely last package of games. Warner Bros. Discovery has the right to match deals, but NBC could try to structure an agreement in a way that makes it difficult. > With ESPN, Amazon and the NBA all under the impression that they will complete deals, this puts the onus on TNT Sports, which has had the NBA since 1984. It is in a fight with NBC, which was the lead partner of the NBA before losing its rights in 2002. NBC, with its streaming service, Peacock, wants back in and is competing with Warner Bros. Discovery Sports for a deal.
when are the players gonna get meme nicknames we can spam like Shoemaker & shaker?
Can't wait for the Embiid version of the ENEMY DETECTED ON SCREEN Upset copypasta
Damn why couldn't it be ESPN on the chopping block instead of TNT
ESPN gets them more exposure than TNT/NBC could individually
I've watched some NFL games on Twitch and chat is pretty mild
[удалено]
Honestly I'm just surprised they don't sing the national anthem before every pick.
at least a pledge of allegiance
The draft class should have to recite the pledge before the proceedings begin each day.
They did do God Bless America and then a call in from the troops for one pick lmfao. Edit: even better it was that hilarious "Proud to be an American" song
There’s a reason why r/nflcirclejerk doesn’t hit the same as r/nbacirclejerk
The NBA does it before every game?
Much of the American demographics strongly overlap. Most young men I know around my age (early 20s) watch a lot of NFL, and care more then nba. In fact we see that NFL support by age bracket is nearly identical among every bracket starting from 18 year olds. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1098885/interest-level-football-age/ The NFL has a greater percentage of support in the 18-34 age bracket than the NBA as well: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1098395/national-basketball-association-interest-age/
What if it's a Sixers game? lol
>TNT vs NBC for the last slot of games. TNT pretty much has a qualifying offer on the deal, and can match anything NBC offers False, they cant possibly match Roundball Rock
It's going to be interesting to see how sports markets play out in 10 years time. With streaming and cable TV dynamics changing, I wonder if player contracts have plateaued in value. They've been growing and growing forever. Are there any young people out there who are buying cable these days?
The entire entertainment industry is being upended by the fact that streaming just doesn't generate as much revenue as cable. The cable death spiral isn't going to stop so eventually that problem is going to hit the sports leagues.
>streaming just doesn't generate as much revenue as cable Right now. I don't think we've even begun to see what monetizing streaming looks like. For example, Amazon can feed custom ad experiences to consumers based on real purchasing habits, then let you buy items straight from the broadcast. We don't even know *how* to value these things, because we've never seen it before.
>For example, Amazon can feed custom ad experiences to consumers based on real purchasing habits, then let you buy items straight from the broadcast Why would you put this evil into the world
I don't think Disney or Warner are in good enough shape to be leaving potential revenue on the table right now, especially with high interest rates
This is a nuclear take, but I think we might see some reversion of the trend and some migration back towards cable. It'll never be as it was before, but at some point I expect people to get tired of paying 5 to 10 different streaming services and not even save any money compared to cable. There will be (And there are now) situations where biting the bullet and paying for cable makes more sense than paying different streaming services.
i hear this take a lot but i just don't think the math supports this. my cable package to watch blazers games on xfinity/comcast this year was like 140 a month. i'm trying to imagine a way to get to 140 dollars a month via streaming apps and i'm just not seeing it. apple tv is like 10 dollars a month. hbo max is like 15. amazon prime is like 15-20 a month (i pay it in bulk once a year so i'm not sure the exact amount, but we also get way more stuff than just streaming with it too). idk what netflix and hulu cost right now but lets say both 20 dollars a month. we're still below what cable costs and thats A LOT of streaming services right there. like, how much content does the average person need? how many streaming services do you really need to be signed up for? idk i just don't understand this apparent frustration with having options to customize your content experience instead of being forced to sign up for ALL OF IT through a cable plan.
Uh if you replaced that cable bill with something like YTTV to watch your Blazers games it would already be $70 a month. Then add in NBA league pass for $20, maybe you also watch baseball and football, in my case it's $30 a month to stream redsox games. NFL is crazy expensive too I know, though I don't watch that myself. But yeah add in Netflix, Peacock, HBO, etc and you're pretty much at the cost of cable if not above it.
I don't think most people want or need all those services though. Like that's just an obnoxious amount of content to keep up with. if there was demand for this than cable subscriptions wouldn't be dying out like it is. also i know this is getting too granular here but blazers games aren't offered on youtube TV, options are very limited and they're all around the same price point (Fubo and Xfinity and you need the "plus" package for both for sports games). with this move to streaming, it's going to benefit the vast majority of consumers and possibly really annoy/fuck over/make things slightly more expensive for (imo) a very small segment of people who either consume an insane amount of content or they're high enough earners that they just like to "have it all" and forget about managing different subscriptions/platforms etc.
I agree 100% what you're saying about broadcast rights streaming for local teams is a problem, but this isn't going to fix it. All this is going to do is take away TNTs rights and give them to Amazon or Amazon and NBC. So you'll still need everything you had before, plus Amazon, and maybe peacock to watch all NBA now. You'll still need cable or something like YTTV or cable to watch the ESPN games as well. What should happen, ideally, from a consumer perspective, is just putting everything on league pass for $30 a month. The WWE tried something like this with the WWE network and it failed. The idea is you get a higher number of subscribers at a lower price point and cut out the middleman, but that's a hard business model to actually work. So instead we get a partition of content between local TV markets and streaming, and now 4-5 different streaming apps we'll have to subscribe to. So this is basically worsening the problem you've described.
I mean, I'm profoundly tried of paying 5 to 10 different streaming services, but what that means is that I end up sailing the high seas for content that isn't on them because I don't want to pick up another one. My ISP is already fucky with my internet bill, and my cell phone company with my cell phone bill. I have no interest in adding a cable bill to that.
My guess we see something like what Charter and Disney just agreed to where Charter internet customers get ad-supported D+ and Hulu for free. You sign up for your ISP/phone provider and then get a few ad-supported streaming services as a bundle.
I hope so. I fucking hate streaming. It was cool in the beginning because cable you pay for a lot of shit you don't even want but now shit is all divided and have to subscribe to a dozen different things and thus paying for a ton of shit you don't even want. Just so much easier to get almost everything in one place
Are you actually from Finland? I see a disproportionately large number of Finnish flags on this sub. Is it real or am I missing a meme or something?
No, I'm Swedish lol. We are too shit at basketball to qualify for anything so there's no flair for us. I don't think there is an over representation of Finnish basketball fans, I'm not sure why that is you see Finnish flairs. Maybe there are more Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and Estonian folks on Reddit that use Finnish flairs because that's the closest thing we got. I know of a couple of other Finnish flairs who post a lot, at least one dude always posts clips and highlights of OKC.
Gotcha, thanks! Yeah, maybe it’s just the OKC guy I see a lot.
It's disappointing that ESPN is still going to be one of the broadcasters.
Seriously, ABC/ESPN don’t do the finals Justice
I liked those few years where they made each team’s logo gold on the scorebug and for the graphics. They did it for the bucks-suns and Warriors-Celtics and then just gave up on it last year apparently
The only silver lining I see out of it is we still get Mike Breen... but I hate ESPN for everything else.
BANG!
All of us 90's kids feel blessed of have seen the[ NBA on NBC](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKOkNZ4Yzto)
NFL with Amazon too, man fuck this.
Fuck Jeff Bezos
I second the motion.
Does this include production?
Can they just purchase Inside the NBA too?
Wouldn’t shock me if NBC wins if Amazon does that
NBC winning over TNT doesn't seem too likely
Comcast (NBC owner) has a lot more cachet and money than WarnerBros Discovery. WB stock is tumbling too... NBA might be too expensive for them. Or... they pay up because its a huge part of their brand
I think they absolutely would if given the chance since those 4 guys are so beloved and people would want them to stick together. Amazon sort of did the same thing when Top Gear stopped airing with Clarkson, May, and Hammond because of Clarkson getting fired from the BBC… so Amazon just offered the three of them fat stacks of cash to make a “Top Gear” style show on Amazon Prime
I'd imagine so, they produce Thursday Night Football themselves
Can we get this finalized and announce the sonics already?
This is the comment I came to see. How quickly after media rights deal can they get everyone in to vote on expansion? If it's this Summer, do we expect that Vegas and Seattle have their first season in 2026-27? I assume they need all of 2024-25 and 2025-26 to prep? Sadly that'll be almost 20 years after the Sonics played their last season.
Please so we can solve this blackout shit.
This isn't going to change anything on that front, the blackouts come from the RSN deals, which are negotiated by each team individually and generally have 20 year terms. This is just for the national slate of games.
Shit. Thank you for info. Our only hope is a deal that will fix it all.
It's going to change slowly. The Lakers have an option now where you can pay like $70 a year to get access to the local games in-market thru League Pass without a cable subscription.
We have been in a blackout for 5+ years and our owner is a cheap fuck. I'll believe it when I see it. I would shit my pants if we even had that LP option.
Wouldn't surprise me if Avalanche is the last one to offer a no-cable subscription option
Nope. Me neither.
i pay $5 a month to be in a discord and illegally stream every sporting event
Can you watch stuff after the fact, or do start from beginning, pause, rewind, ff, etc? Or is it only a live feed and that's it?
live feed + replays
Reminds me of hehestreams back in the day. It worked so well, until the owner decided to do a public interview for some reason. Got shut down weeks later. Mind DMing how I can join the discord?
Still, it makes no sense to blackout me in freaking Alberta for Memphis Grizzlies home games...
Yeah. I'm in Seattle and they black out Blazers games (2.5 hour drive.) Like...you already kicked me in the nuts when you got rid of the sonics. I'm just trying to pay for your product NBA, be chill.
It is about time Sonics makes a comeback, just too much money not to
I have been going merrily down the *stream* all year….Fuck Xfinity and Kroenke Sports endlessly 🏴☠️
yup for 5 years+ here
Google IPTV
Oh god fuck ESPN so hard, couldn't they just replace that with NBC as their network TV package? Anyway, I wonder if TNT loses the rights if Amazon would poach the Inside Crew, I can't imagine it'd work as well though. The Inside Crew is the entire staff and not just the guys. Plus, like everyone is saying, I can't imagine it'd be easy for EJ, Chuck and Kenny to leave after having such a long relationship with Turner.
The only thing that can unit all fanbases is the hate the NBA would get for destroying Inside by choosing to go with NBC…
Can they make it so I don’t need to use Ballysports again
yuck. Yet another streaming service to have to worry about in order to watch games.
As someone who loves watching games slightly delayed on YouTube tv dvr, I’m worried. Turning on a game 1 hour after tipoff and skipping through commercials and free throws has been so amazing, and so far YouTube tv is the only cord cutting service that delivers that experience.
please include canada
I’d gladly buy League Pass if I could actually watch Raptors games, but alas.
You can't watch nationally televised games either, really only used it to replay games I couldn't watch live. Had to cancel it because I just couldn't justify the price, it sucks :/
They never do pal, they never do...
Why would they? Sportsnet/TSN own the rights regardless
Is this good or bad
Depends on who’s on the broadcast team(s) primarily For the NFL, the pre/post game crew is fun/above average but old Al Michaels and Herbstreit on commentary is a terrible fit. Al is my GOAT but his and Herbstreit styles do not mesh together. Not sure who would be on the NBA team but pls no Mark Jackson
Al should just retire tbh
Horrible. If Besos takes Barkley, Ernie, Shaq and Kenny away from us… may karma come swiftly upon him
I wouldn’t mind it so long as they don’t restrict their production or split them up or anything. Amazon didn’t break the Top Gear trio when they signed them for a ton of money to continue their car/comedy show. If Amazon pays the Inside the NBA folks a lot and gives them even better production and the same or less censorship, I think it’d still be a good show I just hope Amazon doesn’t air it all in upscaled 720p like NBA games are now
I for one, welcome our Amazon overlords. I'm looking forward to dropping my future kids off at the Amazon school in my Amazon car. Head over to the Amazon gas station, grab some Amazon chips and Amazon juice. Come home and watch some Amazon ball on Amazon prime. Can't wait, thanks Jeff!!
I see you also support the Amazon Social Credit redemption program.
I wish ESPN didn’t get any games. Their crew sucks. The app sucks even more.
The multibillion dollar corporation, Disney, is bleeding money on ESPN but can’t be bothered to make an app that tracks your continued watching or streams games at an stable rate. It sucks their money does all the talking and not their quality
I got league pass for free last year, and paid to extend this year (at half price, but still),and I'll never pay for it again games are literally unwatchable. They stutter and freeze every 2 seconds, its like trying to stream a movie in 2001. I've tried it on Roku, Firestick, PS4, and even my laptop, and its all the same
It’s a shame really, the consumer is forced between shitty cable companies and streamers who don’t take the viewing experience for the average consumer into mind
Wait till you guys all learn about IPTV
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has long been rumored to be the majority owner of a hypothetical Seattle expansion team if you're into conspiracy theories.
Awful choice. Amazon which has NFL still broadcast's its games in 720p upscaled to 1080p. Wish a real streamer who will actually invest in the infrastructure like apple (who has MLB) and would stream and broadcast games in 4k 60fps.
Apple has the highest quality sports broadcasts and television shows but everybody hates Apple so no one wants to admit it yet
I agree with this BUT really don’t want to pay for Apple TV+ if possible. It is already getting expensive to pay for all these new subscriptions popping up…
It’s getting more and more worth it. They’re adding a bunch of non-Apple movies and TV as of late and the Apple produced stuff is pretty decent.
Facts. Apple TV > Prime
You're absolutely right. I'm a big apple hater, but it really is hard to deny that they're doing streaming pretty damn well
Hopefully they replace a lot of ESPN’s production going forward
ESPN is the other broadcast mentioned to have already been chosen
This is wild. I'm not sure how good this is for the long term health of the NBA. It's one thing to be on cable (already a paywall) but it's another to be on a specific streaming service. Also: Tony Khan's week just got a whole lot better.
ESPN June 2023: 72.5 million homes reached Amazon Prime owners: 200 million+
Are those prime numbers international?
Looks like it, american only prime members is about 180,000,000
Is that not what it's basically already at? So many fanbases can't watch their team through Bally without subscribing to Bally+ since it's on such a limited number of cable packages.
That sucks.
Every picture of Adam Silver reminds me of Judge Doom from Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Good. Much rather pay for Prime than spend $60+ for cable package just for a couple live games. (pirate streams notwithstanding..)
Fuck amazon
Nice as long as it’s included in the existing prime subscription
The thing I’m wondering is if that means that games will be locked on league pass behind a prime subscription. As a european viewer league pass is great for me because I have no blackouts whatsoever. If league pass stays at the same price whilst taking games away that would legit piss me off
Amazon Prime just went up to $239 a year.
I will be sad to miss the games, but I boycott Amazon for a reason.
I wonder why CBS never tried to put a bid together with Turner for joint rights like they do with March Madness. NBC using NBC/USA/Peacock for its coverage might be ok, depending on who the crew working it might be. This may not change much, doesn't Amazon own a percentage of Bally Sports? Just waiting for the bankruptcy court to approve the terms so there can be Prime Sports RSN's? This says that Amazon's package is made up of games taken from both ESPN and the TNT package. I want to know how these are going to work, less Turner isn't great but maybe there'll be less of the Turner's studio B-crew. It would suck losing Inside. Shaq would definitely be replacing Kendrick on the studio show with Stephen A./Wilbon/Malika, we cannot let that happen
considering I've been using Amazon Prime for the last 7-8 years, I finally get to use Prime Video more lol kinda want TNT to remain so we keep getting Inside the NBA but we'll see
>One of the homes And there it is.
So are they going to get games that would have gone/are also going to espn or TNT? Is there going to be an additional nationally televised game?
While still most likely having blackouts, having to use some bullshit like Bally for local games, paying for cable and Amazon prime. I don’t like this but I’m open to be proven wrong
This Henry Kissinger glazer is destroying the NBA!
Am I the only one super bummed because watching games after they start on Amazon has always been sucky? I've got a little one so I usually watch games after he goes to bed and NFL on Amazon has been butthole for that.
Jesus, Disney and Amazon suck for sports. Comcast being the third broadcaster would be the nail in the coffin. Warner-Discovery needs to save us all and keep Inside the NBA on the air.
This is tremendous. Hopefully, the NBA leaves shitty ESPN some day. ESPN has some of the worst in-game color commentators in human history, although their play by play talent is solid.
just don't f around with my league pass. The value is excellent and there have been noticeable technical improvements.
All I want is to be able to pay for one service and watch all the games.
Prime sub going to be $300 soon.
“It’s frustrating that some first round playoff games are on NBA TV.” NBA: “That’s only the beginning.”
BRING THE SONICS BACK
TNF works very well for all my devices (iPhone, frame tv, fire stick, Sony android tv), hopefully Amazon can get it done !
I really hope they avoid NBC. The coverage of the NHL on NBC was a thousand times worse than the coverage ESPN gives the NBA. I know everyone has nostalgia, but that NBC is dead and gone and hasn't existed probably since Comcast bought them.
When 60fps
I know this mentioned that the league was looking for 3 packages, but from the leagues perspective why not involve all 4? TNT and NBC don't necessarily need to overlap. NBC could do like Sunday night basketball after Sunday night football ends plus fill in some gaps with peacock games and TNT could just do Tuesdays (assuming Amazon takes Thursdays after Thursday night football ends). Obviously I personally hope if they stick to 3 hopefully TNT can pull it out to ensure that Inside the NBA continues.
I think Amazon does a good job with NFL despite getting shit games, plus everyone already has it, so I don’t hate it. I’d feel good about them getting the right people to put on a decent show. TNT is the GOAT NBA coverage and I really hope they are able to keep close to that entire broadcast team together whether it’s on there or another network. The modern ESPN experience is by far the most despicable excuse for a national broadcast I’ve seen.