NBA TV


NBA TV is an American sports-oriented pay television network owned and operated by the National Basketball Association. Dedicated to basketball, the network features exhibition, regular season and playoff game broadcasts from the NBA season and related professional basketball leagues, as well as NBA-related content including analysis programs, specials and documentaries. The network is headquartered in Secaucus, New Jersey. The network also serves as the national broadcaster of the NBA G League and WNBA games. NBA TV is the oldest subscription network in North America to be owned or controlled by a professional sports league, having launched on November 2, 1999.
, NBA TV is available to approximately 37.0 million television households in the United States, down from its 2013 peak of 61.0 million households.

History

The network launched on November 2, 1999 as nba.com TV; the channel, which was renamed to the second and current name on 11 February 2003, originally operated from studio facilities housed at NBA Entertainment in Secaucus, New Jersey. The network signed a multi-year carriage agreement with three of the U.S.'s five largest cable providers, Cox Communications, Cablevision and Time Warner Cable, on June 28, 2003; this expanded the network's reach to 45 million pay television households in the U.S., in addition to distribution in 30 countries worldwide. After Time Warner shut down the sports news network CNN/SI in 2002, many cable providers replaced that network with NBA TV.
The network mainly launched with two purposes; to serve as a barker channel for the league's out-of-market sports package NBA League Pass, along with featuring statistical and scoring information which was more easily accessible in the pre-broadband age, and it featured mainly archival content from the NBA Entertainment archives in its upper pane to fill programming time. As time went on, the network added more programming, including international basketball leagues and programming from FIBA usually unseen in the American market. The programming mix and channel format changed around the same time of the CNN/SI shutdown.
On October 8, 2007, it was reported that the National Basketball Association would transfer the channel's operations to Time Warner's Turner Sports division.
Turner took over the channel's operations on October 28, 2008, and began using the same announcers and analysts used on TNT's NBA telecasts. Analysis and news programming also received an upgrade, with production of the programs being relocated to Studio B at Turner Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, located adjacent to Studio J, where TNT's post-game program Inside the NBA is broadcast. The repeats of NBA games on TBS and TNT began in 2009, as NBA Classics.
In 2024, the NBA signed a new media rights deal with ABC/ESPN, NBC and Amazon Prime Video beginning in the 2025–26 season, ending TNT's broadcasting relationship with the league. For several months, the future of the channel remained uncertain with no entity designated to operate the channel. On November 18, TNT parent company Warner Bros. Discovery announced that they reached a settlement with the NBA over a lawsuit it had filed over Prime Video's contract, which includes certain international and highlights rights for WBD divisions, and a five-year renewal with TNT Sports to operate NBA TV and the NBA's digital properties.
On June 27, 2025, it was instead announced that TNT Sports would withdraw from its management agreement with NBA TV and NBA Digital, and its operations would be taken in-house by the league from its headquarters in New Jersey effective October 1. TNT Sports CEO Luis Silberwasser stated that the division was "unable to agree on a path forward that recognized the value of our expertise, quality content and operational excellence that our fans and partners have come to expect from TNT Sports." A sticking point in negotiations was the lower number of games that NBA TV would be able to air due to the new contracts made by NBC and Prime Video, additionally the network will no longer air any playoff games.

Carriage agreements

On April 16, 2009, DirecTV announced that it had reached a carriage agreement with the NBA to continue carrying NBA TV, moving it from the satellite provider's Sports Pack add-on tier to its lower-priced Choice Xtra base package on October 1, 2009. DirecTV believed the move will make the channel available to an additional eight million subscribers.
On June 4, 2009, Comcast announced that it had reached an agreement with the NBA to move the channel from the cable provider's Sports Entertainment Package to its basic level Digital Classic package, by the start of the 2009–10 NBA season. Like DirecTV, Comcast estimated that an additional eight million customers would effectively gain access to the channel. Verizon FiOS added the channel and NBA League Pass to its systems on September 23, 2009. The network also signed new multi-year agreements with Time Warner Cable, Cablevision and Dish Network on October 22, 2009, as well as a renewal agreement with Cox Communications earlier in the year.
With all of the above carriage deals, the NBA estimates that it would increase NBA TV's overall subscriber reach to 45 million pay television homes. On October 29, 2010, AT&T U-verse reached a carriage deal to carry the channel's standard and high definition feeds.
NBA TV is not available to legacy Charter Communications customers using outdated billing plans, which carried the network as NBA.com TV prior to 2004, due to unknown carriage conflicts; NBA League Pass was likewise unavailable on Charter until a broader rollout for the 2020–21 season began. NBA TV has been available to Charter households where available since February 2017, if a customer switches to the new 'Spectrum' billing plan which united Charter, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks under the Spectrum branding.
, the channel was available in 38.6 million homes in the United States.

Programming

NBA TV offers news programs devoted to basketball daily, in addition to programs showcasing the lives of individual basketball players, documentaries focusing on a particular NBA team during the season and archived broadcasts of well-known games.
NBA TV carries at least 90 regular season games per season, which typically air four days a week during the NBA season, as well as some first-round playoff games. It also carries its own coverage of the NBA draft.
Live games on NBA TV are subject to local blackout restrictions, since NBA TV does not hold the exclusive broadcast rights to any of its games. Games carried by NBA TV are also carried by each team's local rights holder, either a regional sports network or a broadcast television station.
The network also shows international games, typically on Saturday evenings, with special emphasis on the Euroleague and the Maccabi Tel Aviv team from Israel. In April 2005, NBA TV televised the Chinese Basketball Association finals for the first time.
The channel's previous flagship program was NBA Gametime Live, a studio show featuring coverage of news from around the league, and highlights and look-ins at games currently in progress. It broadcast six nights per-week during the NBA season, aside from Thursday nights during the regular season
On October 11, 2017, it was announced that the Players Only franchise, which made its debut last season on TNT, will show live games on NBA TV, starting October 24, 2017 and every Tuesday after that, for the first half of the 2017–18 season before transitioning to TNT for the remainder of the regular season starting January 23, 2018. After the cancellation of Players Only in 2019, Tuesday and Monday night games on NBA TV were rebranded as NBA TV Center Court, with Brian Anderson handling the Tuesday night games and Spero Dedes the Monday night games. They are joined alongside Greg Anthony and Dennis Scott. With TNT moving its marquee games to Tuesdays in 2021 during the NFL regular season, NBA TV Center Court was moved to Monday nights for most of the season, though it would continue to air select broadcasts on Tuesdays when TNT has other programming commitments.
Beginning 2021, NBA TV began to broadcast a package of men's and women's Southwestern Athletic Conference college basketball games in February as an observance of Black History Month. This marked NBA TV's first broadcasts of college basketball games.
In October 2025, with the transition to in-house operations, NBA TV announced a revamp of its television and digital programming launching on October 15, with goals for the channel and the NBA apps to become a "24/7 hub" for basketball. The new schedule features television simulcasts of Sirius XM NBA Radio shows such as The Starting Lineup and NBA Today. ''The Association serves as NBA TV's new flagship studio show, and will also stream for free on the NBA app. The network also acquired rights to various international basketball leagues as part of a partnership with Sportradar, and there are plans to broadcast coverage of high school basketball games under the Future Starts Now'' banner. The channel will continue to air 60 non-exclusive regular season NBA games per-season.

List of programs broadcast by NBA TV

10 Before Tip3DTVBeyond The PaintBooks and BasketballCourtside CinemaGame Of The Day#HandlesHardwood Classics High Tops: Plays of the MonthInside the NBA NBA 360NBA Access with Ahmad RashadNBA Action NBA BasketballographyNBA.com Fantasy InsiderNBA CrunchTime – focuses on live NBA games till the buzzer, includes CrunchTime Alert, similar to NBA ScoresNBA FitNBA Gametime Live NBA Gametime Live Specials The Association NBA Home VideoNBA Hoop PartyNBA Inside Stuff NBA JamNBA JourneysNBA PresentsNBA SlideshowNBA SpecialsNBA TV Top 10 Games of the WeekNBA TV Marquee MatchupNBA TV OriginalsNBA VaultNBA WiredOpen CourtPlayoff PlaybackReal NBAReal Training CampShaqtin' a Fool The BeatThe Starters Vintage NBA
  • ''WNBA Action''

High definition

NBA TV HD is a 1080i high-definition simulcast feed of NBA TV that is available on most providers. All studio programs and original programs are shot in HD, and all live games and recent game rebroadcasts are televised in HD. The high-definition version of this channel was launched in 2007.

Personalities

The studio host and analysts vary on each night's broadcast of NBA Gametime.

Studio hosts and play-by-play

Studio analysts and color commentators

Contributors

Other hosts

;The Starters
  • Leigh Ellis
  • Trey Kerby
  • Tas Melas
  • J. E. Skeets
;NBA Inside Stuff

Former hosts and analysts

NBA TV International

NBA TV International is a feed of NBA TV available in countries outside the United States, utilizing the same studio for analysis and commentary segments and taped programming, but largely airs a different lineup of games than the U.S. channel. NBA TV International shows one or two live regular season games per day, with the delayed coverage of selected playoff games that are not broadcast live by NBA TV, all conference semis, finals and the Finals, as well as All-Star live games and contests and most nationally televised U.S. games ; the rights to those games are instead sold to domestic television networks in each territory. As of 2022, NBA TV International can be seen in 100 countries via the following partners:
NBA TV Canada, the Canadian version of the channel owned by Toronto Raptors owners Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, carries some of the same game broadcasts as the flagship U.S. service, ESPN, and TNT instead of the secondary game package found on NBA TV International.
On 16 October 2010, NBA Premium TV was launched in the Philippines. It was a redirect broadcast of NBA TV and aired locally televised and nationally televised games in the United States. It went defunct on 1 October 2019, almost 9 years after it existed.
In February 2012, NBA TV International was made available on NBA.TV as an internet subscription channel outside the United States.
On beIN Channels Network in the Arab world, NBA TV is not available, though beIN Sports NBA airs some of the same games.
On 31 July 2020, the Philippine version of the channel, NBA TV Philippines, was launched.

Past playoff broadcast criticism

NBA TV was criticized in the past for its first-round playoff coverage merely passing down the broadcast of a game from a regional sports network for national broadcast, amplifying the chosen team's broadcast and bias for said team to a national level. from the 2012 playoffs to the 2025 playoffs, NBA TV produced a full and neutral national broadcast for those games.