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(Reuters) -The National Basketball Association has finalized a $76 billion deal that will make Comcast's NBCUniversal and Amazon.com's Amazon Prime Video new partners, and it will maintain Disney's ESPN as the home of the NBA finals, the Athletic reported on Wednesday, citing sources. The deal will extend for 11 seasons, the report said, citing executives with direct knowledge of the deals. The new agreement, which is more than three times the current deal, comes as sports become a powerful draw for media companies trying to expand premium viewership.
NBA has always been a star-driven sport with talents such as Michael Jordan, LeBron James and Shaquille O'Neal dominating the games and viewership. Disney's ESPN and ABC, and Warner Bros Discovery's TNT sports have been the league's two primary partners from 2002 and 1984, respectively. But media reports have said the NBA has been looking to bring in new partners to maximize returns and more than double the deal value.
If the deal goes through, it could end a 40-year-long partnership with Warner's networks.
However, TNT could still match the deal, the Athletic report added.
Warner will have the NBA next year as well since the new rights deal doesn't kick in until the end of the 2024-25 season. ESPN declined to comment while NBC, Amazon and NBA did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comments.
The league's governors are expected to formally approve the agreements with ESPN, NBCUniversal and Amazon, after which the NBA will send the finished contracts to TNT Sports, the report said.
(Reporting by Priyanka.G and Harshita Mary Varghese in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel, Shailesh Kuber and Alan Barona)
