The NBA is quickly trying to move on from the mess made with Warner Brothers Discover / TNT by asking the New York Supreme Court to dismiss a lawsuit brought on by the Media conglomerate.
The suit alleged that the NBA breached its contract by rejecting WBD’s matching offer for a new media rights deal and signing with Amazon.
In a 28-page filing, plus supporting documents, the league asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit with prejudice, so it can’t be revisited in the future.
The NBA says that WBD (Turner / TNT Sports’ parent company) tried to improperly rewrite the terms of Amazon’s offer and then accept those terms.
“TBS chose not to match NBCUniversal’s offer, which would have enabled TBS to continue distributing games via its TNT linear cable network,” the league said, per ESPN. “Instead, TBS purported to match the less-expensive Amazon offer, but only after revising it to include traditional distribution rights and making numerous other substantive changes.”
The NBA claims that WBD “made substantive revisions to eight of the Amazon offer’s 27 sections (including revisions to 22 different subsections), changed 11 defined terms that are collectively used roughly 100 separate times, struck nearly 300 words, and added over 270 new words, substantially altering the parties’ rights and obligations in the process.”
The league says that WBD’s method if distribution (linear television) means that the entity should have matched NBC’s $2.45 billion per year offer, not the cheaper $1.8 billion offer – which Amazon made for streaming only distribution.
The NBA’s lawyers went on to say that, “Far from accepting each term of Amazon’s offer, TBS’s revisions constituted a counteroffer that the NBA was free to reject.”
TNT Sports still maintains it fulfilled its contractual right to match a third-party offer.
“Not only is it our contractual right, but it is in the best interest of the fans who want to continue to enjoy our industry-leading NBA content with the choice and flexibility we offer them through our widely distributed platforms including TNT and Max,” TNT said. “We will file our opposition in the coming weeks.”