- TNT will no longer carry NBA games beginning with the 2025-26 season
Beloved studio show ‘Inside the NBA’ was saved last week as TNT agreed to license it to ESPN, but Charles Barkley found out along with everyone else about the deal.
After Warner Bros. Discovery (the parent company of TNT) lost NBA rights for the league’s new deal starting next year – hurling ‘Inside the NBA’s future into massive doubt – The Wall Street Journal reported last week that ‘Inside’ would move to ESPN.
And while that news was a positive for the show’s outlook, Barkley bristled in a recent interview about a lack of communication from his bosses.
‘I’ll tell you what’s fun. They haven’t even told us we lost the NBA,’ Barkley said on ‘The Bettor Angle’ show on The BetQL Network, per Awful Announcing.
‘We have to hear it through the media. And even this thing with ABC/ESPN, I heard about it on the internet. Scott Van Pelt, Brian Windhorst, Elle Duncan, Bob Myers, all friends of mine who I really like a lot. They texted me welcoming me to the ESPN family. I’m like, what happened? TNT didn’t even have the courtesy.
Charles Barkley criticized his TNT bosses for their lack of communication with him
Shaquille O’Neal (left), Ernie Johnson (center left), Kenny Smith (center right) and Barkley (right) are seen during a broadcast from the 2023-24 NBA season
‘Basically, we got traded,’ he continued about the show, which also features Shaquille O’Neal, Kenny Smith and host Ernie Johnson.
‘If I was going to trade somebody that I had respect for and appreciate, I would at least give them a heads up. I wouldn’t let them hear about it from other people or the internet.’
In July, the NBA announced a new 11-year TV rights deal beginning in the 2025-26 season, in which it renewed with the Walt Disney Company and formed new agreements with NBCUniversal (NBCU) and Amazon – cutting WBD out.
WBD announced plans in late-July to invoke a clause in its contract with the league, giving the company the right to match offers for future media rights – specifically trying to target the Amazon deal.
The NBA rejected WBD’s reported offer of $1.8billion per year, saying that the company was unable to fully match the terms of Amazon’s contract.
In response to being frozen out, WBD sued the league – arguing their billion-dollar offer matched the deal by Amazon.
That lawsuit was dropped amid the agreement to license ‘Inside the NBA’ to ESPN.
In exchange for the rights to ‘Inside,’ ESPN reportedly agreed to sublicense Big 12 college football and basketball games to WBD – which can be aired on TNT and on the company’s MAX streaming service.
It’s not clear if ‘Inside’ would replace ESPN’s current NBA studio program, ‘NBA Countdown.’
