In a court filing at a New York test jury Thursday, TBS and Warner Bros. Discovery sued the NBA, NBA Media Ventures and NBA Properties.
A summons written by attorney David Yohai read,” You are now summoned to answer the problem in this activity and to provide a copy of your answer.” Yohai, a top partner in the prosecution section of Weil, Gotshal &amp, Manges, is representing TBS and WBD.
Sportico has obtained a edited version of the lawsuit’s complaint, which was filed as a locked file. The NBA claims WBD violated the terms of Amazon’s present, while the defendants contend that WBD freely invoked a corresponding section to meet an present by Amazon to broadcast games from 2025-26 through 2035-36.

WBD asks for a jury trial for unspecified financial damages as well as an order from the court that did confirm that a match had been held and gave the NBA its due respect. WBD further requests that the NBA been ordered to stop licensing broadcasting rights that it claims to Amazon or other third parties if the “issues presented in the problem” are never resolved prior to the 2025-26 NBA period.
The complaint contains three different types of contract, as well as a third cause of action that would ask for a declaration of WBD’s rights.
What qualifies as properly “matching” in the framework of sports television, where every multimedia company handles the delivery of content different? The underlying dispute is simple to understand but difficult to resolve. As Sportico detailed, matching rules have formerly sparked legal issues, including one in the mid-2000s involving the Houston Astros and Fox Sports.
” Warner Bros. Discovery’s states are without significance, and our doctors may target them”, NBA official Mike Bass said in a statement. In the coming weeks, the group will answer the issue, deny its allegations and movements for its departure. It is also possible the NBA could countersue, depending on the nature of the claims.
Meanwhile, in a statement, WBD says the NBA made an “unjustified rejection of our matching of a third-party offer”. The company continued,” We strongly believe this is not just our contractual right, but also in the best interest of fans who want to keep watching our industry-leading NBA content with the choice and flexibility we offer them through our widely distributed WBD video-first distribution platforms, including TNT and Max,” adding:” We strongly believe this is not just our contractual right, but also in the best interest of fans.”
The complaint includes as an exhibit a copy of the 74-page” NBA/TBS Agreement”, dated Oct. 3, 2024, along with some portions of the agreement’s exhibits. The matching provision is included. The provision considers a number of scenarios in which the NBA and its media rights holders, including TBS, ESPN, NBA TV, and ABC, continue to broadcast NBA games or end their relationship.
An incumbent may accept a third-party offer if it includes provisions not relating to the [over the air ] rights and/or cable rights, but it is not required to do so ( or to pay any portion of the fee or other consideration fairly allocable to any such provisions ).

This language suggests that the incumbent may match an offer without necessarily agreeing to all of its terms.
As WBD tells it, the Amazon offer “unmistakably” related to” cable rights”, which WBD had the right to match. Additionally, WBD asserts that it was not required to “accept conditions that do not relate to cable rights.”
According to the contract,” cable rights” as a term is defined as” TNT Rights, ESPN Rights, NBA TV Rights and any other national cable network telecast rights to NBA game and related non-game programming )”.
The NBA, WBD contends, does n’t believe WBD matched because” Amazon proposed to distribute NBA games on its Prime Video platform” and” TBS could not match by telecasting the games on TNT and Max”.
WBD claims that the NBA is “wrong” about that interpretation because WBD ( through TBS ) “has the exclusive right and obligation to exercise the Cable Rights provided for ( and on the same terms set forth in the Third Party Offer” ), and the Amazon offer includes” cable rights, including TNT Rights” because ( WBD asserts that” the offer is for games that TBS currently has the right to distribute on TNT via Non-Broadcast Television, which includes both cable and Internet distribution.
The NBA is also depicted as claiming that TBS, as a cable TV network,” cannot match the offer of Amazon”.
This is allegedly because Amazon is an “over the top distributor”, and TBS has not agreed to distribute games via the” specified form of combined audio and video distribution” that Amazon provides its subscribers.
But WBD says this is a flawed argument, insisting the Amazon offer does n’t provide clarity on the distribution. Amazon has only been able to “put the games on Prime Video,” and the NBA appears to have attempted to restrict its distribution to only streaming over the Internet.
WBD says” TNT, Max, and Prime Video” are not dissimilar, that 70 % of Prime video watching “occurs on a television”, and TNT and Max, like Amazon Prime, are also distributed via the Internet.
Additionally, the NBA/TBS agreement contemplates using arbitration to settle disputes. If the NBA wants to arbitrate the case and avoid the case before a court, that feature might become crucial.
The NBA will also contend that there is no appropriate injunction at this time because of broadcasting commitments that wo n’t start until the 2025-26 season. Also, to obtain an injunction, WBD will need to establish irreparable harm, which means a harm that money damages ca n’t remedy.
No money damages, for instance, will be able to repair the damage unless a polluting company is prevented from polluting a lake. WBD contends that the loss of NBA telecast rights” cannot be fully quantified by money damages” and that they are “unique and valuable”.
Given that the NBA’s broadcasting contracts have specific monetary terms, it can argue that the loss of this kind of content can be quantified. Moreover, accompanying data ( revenue from viewership, advertisements, etc. ) can also be quantified.
Expect NBA interpretations of the contract language to be wildly different. Remember, a complaint is only one side of a story. It is a document for advocacy, not a purely historical account of events.
( This article has information from the legal complaint that has been updated throughout. )