The nine paydays averaging $15.84 million began in October — filed away as monthly TV money — with the thought they would line the owners’ pockets.

But at closer glance of the NBA’s 11-year, $77 billion national media rights deal from last summer, and the immediate impact on 30 franchises, the realities are more subtle and circumstantial — as in they won’t transform any of the teams’ near-term P&L.

“Does the money help? Of course it does,” said one team executive. “But is anybody going to eat differently? No.”

After candid conversations with multiple franchises, this season’s media rights money — $142.56 million per team, paid out in equal monthly amounts from November through April and lower disparate amounts in October, May and June — is a roughly $40 million increase from last season and is being utilized by teams in mostly these conventional ways:

(1) Player salaries; (2) capital expenditures; (3) recouping lost local TV money; (4) paying luxury tax penalties; (5) paying down debt; and (6) stashing the cash into the general pot of running team business.

“We’ve never looked at it as, ‘Hey everybody, here’s an extra $40 million,’ and let’s ask our owner, ‘Where do you want to spend it?’” said another team executive. “In many ways, it’s part of the budget.”

Said still another club exec: “It definitely is a huge benefit, and I don’t mean to minimize it. But it just doesn’t change our world.”

Instead, the true upside of the NBA’s national media rights bundle is something club execs say nobody talks much about: the secured team debt limit that has expanded this season from $275 million to $425 million.

“All an owner will ask about in finance meetings is, ‘How much do we have left to borrow,’ ” said one exec. “All over the league.”

Behind the scenes, then, this season’s influx of media rights money is an education on how NBA teams divvy up revenue and how they manage debt.

For the 2024-25 season, for instance — under the previous national media rights deal with Disney and Turner — each team received a reported total of $103 million, or a monthly average of $11.44 million over nine months. With the increase in 2025-26 to $142.56 million, or a monthly average of $15.84 million over nine months, that’s virtually a 39% gain this season.

But what would it all be earmarked for? Considering the salary cap went from $140.59 million in 2024-25 to $154.65 million in 2025-26 (almost a 10% increase), teams need to account for that rise in player payroll, which is where one club said about half of its new media rights money is going.

“That’s whose lives are going to change most from this new media deal — it’s the players,” said a team exec, referencing, in part, the basketball-related income (BRI) that’s divided roughly 50-50 with the player pool.

The other most prevalent use of media rights money is to help teams recover from the cratering local TV landscape, where most franchises have seen rights fee cuts or gone with an over-the-air template that has flattened local broadcast revenue.

For teams that do have lucrative local TV deals (e.g., the Lakers have a $192.10 million local rights fee this season and the Knicks $106.56 million, to name two), they also have luxury tax fees to pare. The Lakers’ tax penalty is $21.1 million; the Knicks’ is $45.6 million. Media rights money could help them, and the 12 other luxury tax teams, pay that down markedly.

A few teams also are using media rights money to pursue global sponsorships, an ongoing trend. But ultimately, most execs wanted to talk about the fortuitous leaguewide credit facility, which enables clubs to borrow money at a low interest rate of 1.125% over the secured overnight financing rate (SOFR), which in recent days has hovered around 3.95%.

In other words, the credit facility is a financing platform secured by the league’s national media rights money that enables any NBA team to take exclusive loans at just more than 5% to fund items such as mixed-use projects, practice facilities or operating losses in years they don’t have long playoff runs — without ever having to do a capital call.

With the spike in media rights money, that debt limit has risen by $150 million this season, which is why sources said about three-fourths of the teams will take advantage of the credit facility option. Not only that, because of the new media money, the league also is allowing teams to borrow $50 million more from holding companies that aren’t secured at the team level (meaning higher interest rates), giving teams a total enterprise debt limit of $475 million, up from $325 million.

All of this allows franchises to get creative. Some teams will treat the credit facility as a line of credit, where they access the debt via the program but won’t necessarily borrow the money until they need it. When they do dig into it, they tend to direct the money to arena upgrades or technology investments, etc.

Or teams use it to manage their liquidity on a seasonal basis, meaning they wait until July, August and September, when the media rights money temporarily stops — and draw on the line of credit in those three months to perhaps fund payroll and operations.

Then, when the media money resurfaces in October, they can pay down the money borrowed and reduce their debt — a convenient, low-interest ebb and flow that is all an outgrowth of the ascending national media rights deal.

That said, the $425 million secured credit limit this season is probably locked in for the next few years, based on precedent. But teams also know the media rights money will climb 7% annually for the next 10 years under this deal, meaning by the 2035-36 season, each team will receive a prodigious $280.5 million in national TV cash.

They might eat differently then.

Tom Friend can be reached at tfriend@sportsbusinessjournal.com.