{"id":448537,"date":"2025-12-15T11:36:17","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T11:36:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/448537\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T11:36:17","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T11:36:17","slug":"new-nba-media-rights-money-is-in-but-impact-not-in-plain-sight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/448537\/","title":{"rendered":"New NBA media rights money is in, but impact not in plain sight"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

The nine paydays averaging $15.84 million began in October \u2014 filed away as monthly TV money \u2014 with the thought they would line the owners\u2019 pockets.<\/p>\n

But at closer glance of the NBA\u2019s 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 \u2014 as in they won\u2019t transform any of the teams\u2019 near-term P&L.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoes the money help? Of course it does,\u201d said one team executive. \u201cBut is anybody going to eat differently? No.\u201d<\/p>\n

After candid conversations with multiple franchises, this season\u2019s media rights money \u2014 $142.56 million per team, paid out in equal monthly amounts from November through April and lower disparate amounts in October, May and June \u2014 is a roughly $40 million increase from last season and is being utilized by teams in mostly these conventional ways:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

(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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve never looked at it as, \u2018Hey everybody, here\u2019s an extra $40 million,\u2019 and let\u2019s ask our owner, \u2018Where do you want to spend it?\u2019\u201d said another team executive. \u201cIn many ways, it\u2019s part of the budget.\u201d<\/p>\n

Said still another club exec: \u201cIt definitely is a huge benefit, and I don\u2019t mean to minimize it. But it just doesn\u2019t change our world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, the true upside of the NBA\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll an owner will ask about in finance meetings is, \u2018How much do we have left to borrow,\u2019 \u201d said one exec. \u201cAll over the league.\u201d<\/p>\n

Behind the scenes, then, this season\u2019s influx of media rights money is an education on how NBA teams divvy up revenue and how they manage debt.<\/p>\n

For the 2024-25 season, for instance \u2014 under the previous national media rights deal with Disney and Turner \u2014 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\u2019s virtually a 39% gain this season.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s whose lives are going to change most from this new media deal \u2014 it\u2019s the players,\u201d said a team exec, referencing, in part, the basketball-related income (BRI) that\u2019s divided roughly 50-50 with the player pool.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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\u2019 tax penalty is $21.1 million; the Knicks\u2019 is $45.6 million. Media rights money could help them, and the 12 other luxury tax teams, pay that down markedly.<\/p>\n

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%. <\/p>\n

In other words, the credit facility is a financing platform secured by the league\u2019s 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\u2019t have long playoff runs \u2014 without ever having to do a capital call. <\/p>\n

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\u2019t secured at the team level (meaning higher interest rates), giving teams a total enterprise debt limit of $475 million, up from $325 million.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 and draw on the line of credit in those three months to perhaps fund payroll and operations. <\/p>\n

Then, when the media money resurfaces in October, they can pay down the money borrowed and reduce their debt \u2014 a convenient, low-interest ebb and flow that is all an outgrowth of the ascending national media rights deal.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

They might eat differently then.<\/p>\n

Tom Friend can be reached at tfriend@sportsbusinessjournal.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The nine paydays averaging $15.84 million began in October \u2014 filed away as monthly TV money \u2014 with…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":38464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[1339,1260,4281,62,114263,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-448537","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-print","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-the-insiders","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115723382849057841","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}