The biggest NBA lawsuit of the past two years was Warner Bros. Discovery’s July 2024 breach of contract suit against the league, filed after the NBA refused to let WBD match Amazon’s offer for a slice of the league’s new $77 billion media rights package. That case settled in November 2024 and ended TNT’s 36-year run as a domestic NBA broadcaster. The league has also been fighting a cluster of privacy class actions over data sharing on its digital platforms, with results that have gone both ways.
Warner Bros. Discovery v. NBA
WBD and its subsidiary TBS sued the NBA on July 26, 2024, in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York (Commercial Division), index number 653721/2024. The dispute turned on a matching provision in the 2014 media rights agreement between the league and TBS.
WBD’s reading of the contract was straightforward. The NBA could “not enter into an agreement or agreements with any third party” for future broadcast rights “without first giving” TBS a chance to accept those terms, and if TBS accepted, it “shall have the right and obligation” to exercise the matching rights. On July 17, 2024, the NBA showed WBD the package it intended to award Amazon. Five days later, WBD notified the league it was matching the Amazon offer at $1.8 billion per year. The NBA rejected the match.
WBD asked the court to force the NBA to honor the match before the 2025-26 season began, calling NBA broadcast rights a “unique asset that cannot be replaced” and arguing that losing them would irreparably damage a brand TNT had spent four decades building.
The NBA’s Defense
The league moved to dismiss in August 2024 on two main grounds. First, it argued the matching provision covered distribution through TNT’s linear cable network and not a standalone streaming service like Amazon Prime Video. Because Amazon’s package was the NBA’s first streaming-only national deal, the league said WBD had no right to match it at all.
Second, the NBA invoked the mirror-image rule, which requires an acceptance to match the original offer exactly. The league said WBD’s submission was a counteroffer dressed up as a match. It pointed to several gaps:
- WBD altered eight of the offer’s 27 sections, struck nearly 300 words, and added over 270 new ones.
- Amazon had agreed to deposit roughly $5.4 billion, about three years of rights fees, into escrow upfront. WBD offered syndicated letters of credit instead, which the NBA called “not even close to the same thing.”
- Amazon’s deal allowed the NBA to terminate on a credit downgrade by a single ratings agency. WBD’s version required downgrades from both S&P and Moody’s.
- WBD did not match Amazon’s specific minimum subscriber commitments or its associated measurement formula.
The NBA also argued that Warner Bros. Discovery itself was not a party to the 2014 agreement between the league and TBS, and it accused WBD of “cherry-picking” the cheaper Amazon package to combine “Amazon’s lower price with the linear television rights granted to NBCU.”
WBD answered that TNT and its Max streaming service were distributed over the internet just as Amazon Prime Video is, that 70% of Prime Video viewing happened on a television set, and that it had secured a letter of credit to cover the $5.4 billion upfront payment. Commissioner Adam Silver said the “digital opportunities with Amazon align perfectly with the global interest in the NBA” and that Prime Video would “dramatically expand our ability to reach our fans in new and innovative ways.”
How the Case Settled
The lawsuit never went to trial. On November 18, 2024, WBD and the NBA announced a settlement that resolved every claim and set up a new 11-year partnership without domestic live game rights.
WBD gave up U.S. live broadcasts and kept a collection of adjacent assets:
- TNT Sports retained full creative control and production of Inside the NBA, which moved to ESPN and ABC starting with the 2025-26 season. Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith, and Shaquille O’Neal stayed on as TNT Sports employees, and ESPN gained the right to stop sublicensing the show if any of the main hosts leave. The show premiered on ESPN on October 22, 2025.
- Free access to NBA highlights for 11 years on Bleacher Report and House of Highlights.
- Live rights to 100 regular-season and playoff games for 11 years in the Nordic countries, Poland, and parts of Latin America (excluding Brazil and Mexico). WBD executives estimated the international package could generate about $100 million in profit over five years.
- A five-season NBA Digital partnership covering production, content development, promotion, and sales for NBA digital products, reportedly valued at $350 million. TNT Sports’ operation of NBA TV and NBA.com was set to end on September 30, 2025.
- A global license to create, produce, and distribute new and existing NBA content. In return, the NBA got access to WBD’s basketball footage, including NCAA content.
The Shareholder Securities Suit
The loss of NBA rights triggered a second lawsuit, this one from WBD’s own investors. On August 7, 2024, WBD announced a $9.1 billion non-cash goodwill impairment charge on its cable networks division, citing the “difference between market capitalization and book value, continued softness in the U.S. linear advertising market, and uncertainty related to affiliate and sports rights renewals, including the NBA.” The company took another $2.1 billion in related charges the same quarter, and its stock dropped roughly 6.5% after the earnings release.
Shareholders Anthony Yuson and Michael Steinberg then sued in federal court, alleging they had bought WBD stock at artificially inflated prices because of misleading statements by CEO David Zaslav during the 2024 NBA negotiations. They argued Zaslav had been disingenuous on a May 2024 earnings call about WBD’s matching rights, knowing the company lacked the streaming infrastructure and cross-promotional muscle to actually match Amazon.
U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla dismissed the case on April 1, 2026, holding that Zaslav’s statements were “at worst, puffery,” the sort of optimistic language executives routinely use that does not amount to actionable fraud. The court noted that WBD had “repeatedly communicated to the public the importance to WBD of the NBA rights” in SEC filings and that “widely disseminated media reports” had given investors detailed information about the negotiations. The plaintiffs can still appeal to the Second Circuit.
NBA Privacy Class Actions
Separate from the media rights fight, the league has been defending several suits over how its digital platforms handle user data.
NBA Top Shot Settlement
In Fan v. NBA Properties, Inc. (Case No. 3:23-cv-05069-SI, Northern District of California), plaintiffs Thomas Fan, Matthew Kimoto, and Clinton Brown alleged that NBA Properties and Dapper Labs violated the Video Privacy Protection Act and California law by sharing personally identifiable information with Meta through a tracking pixel on the NBA Top Shot website. The class covered U.S. residents who held both an active Facebook account and an NBA Top Shot account between June 15, 2020, and January 30, 2025.
Judge Susan Illston granted final approval of a $7,050,000 settlement on December 19, 2025, and payments went out on March 19, 2026. Individual payouts were estimated at $36 to $122. The defendants also agreed to suspend the Meta Tracking Pixel on the NBA Top Shot website unless the VPPA is amended or repealed.
NBA App Sent to Arbitration
A parallel lawsuit went after the NBA’s mobile app. In Whalen et al. v. NBA Properties Inc. (Docket No. 1:25-cv-06125, Southern District of New York), California residents James Whalen and Victor Fuentes alleged the “NBA: Live Games & Scores” app illegally shared their names, email addresses, and video-viewing history with Adobe and Braze for marketing and analytics, in violation of the VPPA. On October 29, 2025, Judge Jeanette A. Vargas granted the NBA’s motion to compel arbitration, finding a valid and enforceable arbitration clause in the app’s terms of use. The judge rejected the plaintiffs’ unconscionability argument, noting the hyperlinks to the terms were “conspicuous” and would have been apparent to a “reasonably prudent Internet user.” The ruling stopped the class action in federal court, though the plaintiffs may appeal to the Second Circuit.
Salazar v. NBA at the Supreme Court
The privacy case with the widest reach involved Michael Salazar, who alleged the NBA shared user data with Meta. A district court initially dismissed his claims, holding that his free newsletter subscription and viewing of publicly accessible highlight videos did not make him a “consumer” under the VPPA. The Second Circuit reversed, ruling that anyone who subscribes to any goods or services from a video tape service provider, including a free email newsletter, qualifies as a subscriber under the statute, and that handing over personal information like an email address counts as sufficient consideration even without a monetary payment.
The NBA asked the Supreme Court to take the case. On December 8, 2025, the Court declined, leaving the Second Circuit’s reading of the VPPA in place. The decision reaches beyond the NBA, broadening who can sue under the privacy statute and deepening an existing split among federal appeals courts over the law’s scope.