WBD May Have Put Up a Brick With NBA Suit, LightShed Says
Warner Bros. Discovery's lawsuit against the NBA faces long odds under New York state case law, LightShed Partners blogged Tuesday. It said USA Network's failed suit in 2000 against World Wrestling Federation Entertainment "feels very relevant" to WBD's recent suit…
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against the NBA. USA sued when WWF ended its carriage deal and chose Viacom. LightShed said WBD's litigation, filed last week with the New York Supreme Court in New York County, alleges the NBA is violating WBD's contractual right to match any third-party offer for future NBA telecast carriage. The NBA announced carriage deals with Amazon, Comcast's NBCUniversal and Disney last week. LightShed said the NBA apparently rejected the WBD matching offer because it didn't meet all the material terms of the Amazon arrangement. Amazon proposed streaming games via Prime Video. WBD's Turner offered a combination of linear distribution on TNT and the Max streaming service, the blog post said. Similarly, LightShed said the WWF's decision to choose Viacom's CBS instead of USA was based on USA's failure to match every material term tied to WWF media rights.