Monta Ellis is no longer alone. With the NBA’s new mega TV deal that will soon be officially announced, every single player, coach, owner and executive in the entire association is about to have it all.
According to Richard Sandomir of the New York Times, the NBA will announce a nine-year, $24 billion TV contract with Disney (ESPN and ABC) and Turner (TNT) on Monday. The average annual value is worth almost three times as much as the NBA’s current TV deal.
Annual avg value of new NBA deal soars from about $930M to $2.66B. New deal starts after 2015-16 season.
— Richard Sandomir (@RichSandomir) October 6, 2014
The new deal doesn’t kick in until the 2016-17 season, but it will run through 2025. Aside from that being a ridiculous amount of money, most NBA fans will be paying attention to this story moving forward because of how it will affect the salary cap.
According to Dan Feldman of NBC Sports, the salary cap could rise by about $16 million, though that average estimate could change depending on how the NBA decides to phase in the new salary cap increase. The ultimate number will certainly skyrocket no matter how long it takes to kick in, since half of this incoming money will be going to the players, but the league will need to figure out how it wants to implement the new revenue increase.
Per Grantland’s Zach Lowe, most of the league is opposed to the idea of a huge one-year jump as soon as the new TV deal kicks in, so the NBA will probably opt to smooth out the increase as steadily as possible over the next few seasons. No matter what though, players like LeBron James on two-year contracts who will have the chance to sign new contracts right when the new deal kicks in are in a great place.
It was not an accident, by the way, the Suns rushed to get their deals with Bledsoe and the Morris twins done before this news broke.
— Zach Lowe (@ZachLowe_NBA) October 6, 2014
In fact, most young NBA players will reap huge benefits from this new TV deal. Current deals that seemed overpriced this summer — like the Eric Bledsoe five-year, $70 million mega deal — might not seem so bad depending on how the salary cap increases over the next two seasons, and they especially won’t look as bad once that new deal has officially kicked in.
Then again, if you thought NBA owners were bad about giving out terrible contracts just because they had a bunch of money sitting around before, there’s a good chance those bad habits could get even worse now.
NBC Sports’ Kurt Helin also reports that the NBA is making plans with ESPN to spin off streaming games from NBA League Pass to a new online streaming service.