On Tuesday, the NBA filed a memorandum of law in support of a request to New York Judge Joel M. Cohen to seal what it terms “confidential provisions” of the league’s new national media rights agreements with Amazon and NBCU and of its digital rights agreement with Bleacher Report.
TBS and Warner Bros. Discovery believe the NBA is in breach of contract while the NBA insists the plaintiffs not only didn’t match but couldn’t match the terms of Amazon’s offer, which contemplates the delivery of games through streaming rather than linear TV.
The NBA is concerned that the litigation will lead to public disclosure of “highly sensitive financial and nonfinancial terms” contained in its business contracts.
The league says if targeted provisions were made public, the NBA would suffer commercial disadvantage. To that point, disclosure would allegedly “enable other counterparties with which the NBA negotiates to understand issues that are important to the NBA and how the NBA has resolved them in these particular instances.”