Drama from the backboard to the boardroom

This season’s NBA Finals began last Thursday night in Boston as the Celtics hosted the Mavericks in Game One of the series. The teams will battle out again this week, and will continue to do so until Game Seven this Sunday night depending on how dominant the eventual winner can be.

So for the next week, the United States will be hit by basketball fever. It will fill the air on every sports show, bar and diner in the country. And as usual, there will be no shortage of angles and plot lines to help pique the interest of the nation and draw in casual fans as this season’s two standout sides tussle to become NBA champion.

Boston and Dallas are two sports-mad cities, after all, that are facing one another as the last two teams standing in professional sports for the first time in the history. Across America’s four main professional sports leagues, the cities have captured 46 titles – though Boston has claimed 38 of them. Dig deeper into the tie though and the captivating angles continue to jump from the page.

Could Luca Dončić, the jocular yet steadfastly determined Slovenian star, lead the Mavericks to only their second NBA title and continue the rise of Europeans in the league, following the exploits of Serbian centre Nikola Jokić with the Denver Nuggets last season?

Could the 17-year veteran and five-time All Star Al Horford capture an NBA title with retirement beginning to creep up on him?

Would Kyrie Irving, the mercurial talent who became infamous for dipping his toe in conspiracy theories in recent years, return to Boston’s TD Garden and deny his former side of the Larry O'Brien trophy?

Or would Jayson Tatum, one of the league's brightest stars, finally announce himself as the sport's next global star, as many have touted him to be.

And yet arguably the most interesting story in basketball in the lead-up to this season's climax was the one that was developing away from the court. Speculation had been rife in recent weeks regarding the NBA’s new broadcast deal with the league reportedly exploring a new broadcast deal with new broadcasters, ending a relationship with TNT that went all the way back to 1988. The news sent shockwaves through American sport. TNT and basketball were inextricably linked, it was thought. Generations of basketball fans grew up with their only access to the sport coming via the broadcaster.

Then, details of the deals that are currently being negotiated with new broadcasters surfaced last week just before Game One. This is sport in the 21st century – where the real jostling takes place in the boardroom and not the arena.

According to reports, TNT will lose all rights to broadcast NBA games, with new packages set to be signed with Disney, Amazon Prime and NBC. Though Disney already broadcasts a selection of NBA games on ESPN, the broadcaster is reportedly set to pay $2.6 billion a year to broadcast on its cable sports channel, up from its current package which costs $1.5 billion annually.

Amazon Prime is set to become the league's first major streaming-only broadcaster in a deal that will earn the league $1.8 billion a year, while NBC is expected to pay up to $2.5 billion a year. When all the figures are calculated, the league is expected to earn $76 billion over the next 11 years from the deals.

For most of the league's stakeholders – the players, the executives and the fans to an extent – the news will be welcomed as it brings a sense of freshness to a sport that is already growing rapidly in popularity. David Zaslav, on the other hand, would've been forgiven for watching the finals begin last week without experiencing the same level of excitement and anticipation as others.

Zaslov, the CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery which is TNT’s parent company, is known for playing hardball in negotiations and went as far as saying TNT didn't need the NBA within its stable only a couple of years ago. It seems that the NBA is about to call his bluff, leaving TNT in a desperate situation regarding its future. Alternative options are available in North America, but the NBA is just about as lucrative as it gets especially given the league is set to expand in the coming years.

Former ‘90s star Charles Barkley, who has become one the league's most recognisable pundits on TNT, went as far as saying that the vibes aren't great at the broadcaster with their employees' livelihoods in the balance. "Morale sucks, plain and simple," the 11-time All Star and former MVP told the Dan Patrick Show. “These people I work with, they screwed this thing up, clearly.” 

As soon as other broadcasters began expressing an interest in the league's new broadcast deal, Zaslov should’ve known that his company was in trouble. He was nevertheless offered the same deal NBC is set to sign for $200 million less. He turned it down. The dam is now about to dry out. And while TNT are set to lose their prized asset, the NBA will triple their broadcasting revenue. But this isn't the first cause celebre in which the television executive has found himself.

Zaslov assumed his current role in 2006 and since then has cultivated a reputation for slashing budgets, cutting streaming libraries and even cancelling movies before production is finished so tax write-offs could be claimed. With Zaslov, it has seemingly always been about the bottom line. On this occasion though, he seems to have bitten off more than he can chew.

A man that was listed as one of Time's most influential people of 2022 will now likely have to deal with the fall-out of losing one of world sport’s most lucrative broadcasting deals and the consequences that come with it.

His recent fortunes do however offer a cautionary tale for other media executives, with whom power has resided for decades within the sports broadcasting landscape. With more options than ever available to sports executives such as NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, and the population viewing trends evolving all the time, power may be about to return to sports.

It proves that the Sword of Damocles can fall at any time.