Under New NBA Rights Package, Amazon Prime Video Will Handle Production ‘End to End Internally’

Over the past few years, Amazon Prime Video has grown its sports-rights portfolio by leaps and bounds while continuing to build its infrastructure and team of production personnel. Today, it appears, Prime Video is ready to take full control of its own production destiny as it prepares to tip off new rights deals with the NBA and WNBA next year. “For NBA, what we’ve been doing kind of the last few years as we’ve built out the sports group at Amazon Prime Video is investing in more people, more infrastructure,” said Jeff Kaiser, head of sports programming, Amazon Prime Video, during yesterday’s SBJ Media Innovators conference. “We’re in a good place now where we will be managing all of our NBA production and WNBA production end to end internally.” Amazon Prime Video’s Jeff Kaiser: “We’re looking to take some of the [tech innovations from TNF] and apply them to the NBA when it makes sense.”Since taking over exclusive rights to Thursday Night Football in 2022, Prime Video has worked closely with NBC Sports Group to produce and deliver live game broadcasts. Kaiser described working with NBC as “an amazing collaboration” and said his team has been “really fortunate to work with NBC on Thursday Night Football.” However, the NBA package will be Prime Video’s biggest in-house production operation to date.As part of the NBA rights deal announced in July, Amazon Prime Video inked an 11-year media-rights agreement that will begin with the 2025-26 NBA season.

Under it, Prime Video will present exclusive global coverage of 66 regular-season NBA games: among them, an opening-week doubleheader, a new Black Friday NBA game, and all games from the Knockout Rounds of the Emirates NBA Cup, including In-Season Tournament semifinals and finals. Prime Video also acquires rights to exclusive coverage of every game of the postseason SoFi NBA Play-In Tournament, first- and second-round playoff games, and conference finals in six of the 11 years of the deal.Here are a few more highlights from Kaiser’s session at SBJ Media Innovators:On the league’s resolution of the lawsuit with Warner Bros. Discovery regarding the NBA rights package: “We’ve been living in a world of all systems go, so really no impact as we prepare to launch this NBA package globally in a little less than a year from now.”On why it was important for the Amazon to go after the NBA: “We’ve been constantly evaluating properties globally, literally on an everyday basis based on those evaluations. We’ve made acquisitions over the last few years, both here in the U.S. and internationally.

Examples of that include top-tier soccer in the UK, in Germany, in Italy; Grand Slam Tennis; French Open in France; and, of course, Thursday Night Football here in the U.S. We view this as an extension of that. We’ve been partnering with both [the NBA and WNBA] for a few years, so we view this as the natural evolution of that process — of course, on a much larger scale.”On what aspects of Thursday Night Football coverage will carry over to Prime Video’s NBA coverage: “We are really proud of what we’ve done with Thursday Night Football. That success we hope can translate over to the NBA. I think there’ll be an editorial way in which our talent talk to one another [and] the way we introduce storylines.

That’s something that we feel strongly about continuing. Yeah, I think you’ll see a lot of that same fabric cut through.”On how technological innovations from TNF could make their way into NBA coverage: “Innovation is at the forefront of everything we do, but part of our philosophy at Amazon Prime Video is, we don’t do innovation for the sake of innovation. We don’t do things differently just so we could say, We did this because it’s different. It’s going to be impactful, and it’s going to matter for customers. …

We’re looking to take some of those learnings and apply them to the NBA when it makes sense. It’s across the board: it’s also for our graphics, the way we editorialize the news of the day on Thursday nights, and the [pre/postgame shows].”On what the Prime Video NBA studio shows will look like and building a dedicated studio: “No talent decisions to mention, [but] we’re talking to a lot of folks across the landscape. A lot of whiteboarding sessions. Right now, we take all Thursday Night Football games on the road. That’s 17 games [where] we do our entire pregame show and two postgame shows.

It’s going to be hard to take approximately 100 NBA games, including playoffs, on the road. We’ll need a studio to support that; we’re working through that right now. [It’s] very likely to be built at Amazon Studios in Culver City, so it’ll be an L.A.-based studio show. We’re going to have a mix of single-header nights, double-header nights, potentially some triple-headers as well. That’ll kind of be home base for those.”On Prime Video’s taking over NBA League Pass next season: “We’ve been, for a few years now, a distributor of NBA League Pass.

The big difference is, next season, we’ll be the exclusive digital distributor of NBA League pass, along with the NBA App. If you want to subscribe to League Pass starting next year and watch on a digital platform, you’ll need to subscribe through Prime Video. We have a slew of engineers and product-tech colleagues working to build out a really elevated experience for our future League Pass subscribers.”On the possibility of moving the Emirates NBA Cup to later in the season to coincide with the end of the Thursday Night football season: “It’s an active discussion. Obviously, NBA Cup In-Season Tournament debuted last season, and, this season, the NBA has kind of tinkered with the schedule. I think they’ve taken some of the games off Mondays and off Thursdays.

We’re all going to look together and see what the results of that are. We’ve already started scheduling conversations with the NBA about the overall package. This is a piece that we’re thrilled to have exclusively, NBA Cup–wise. We’ll be the home of the quarters, the semis, as well as the final. And we’ll look and see what’s the right place on the calendar.”On plans for expanding WNBA coverage as the league’s popularity grows: “This past season was amazing.

It was special to be a part of it. We’ve been in the WNBA business now for a few seasons. After next NBA season, it will be an expanded package: we will be producing and distributing 30 WNBA regular-season games. There will be shoulder programming in addition to the regular-season games. We will continue to be the exclusive home of the Commissioner’s Cup, [which] has been a fun tournament for us.”On plans for Black Friday in 2026, when Prime Video will have both NFL and NBA games: “In about a year and change from now, we’re going to have an amazing day for our Prime Video customers: we will have a Black Friday football game — we don’t know where yet — followed by, most likely, an NBA double-header.

When you add on the pregame and postgame shows and shoulder programming, it will be pretty much a 12-hour event exclusively on Prime Video. … And we’re thinking really big about it. Could two of those games be from the same city potentially? Can we integrate the talent we have on our NBA shows with our NFL show?

We’re excited to do that. And of course, Black Friday is a massive day for Amazon’s retail business. The opportunity for sports to be a through line and an experience — customers can watch, shop, spend time with family at home on their living-room device or on the phone they’re sliding into their pocket — is a real differentiator for us.