Charles Barkley is blocking Warner Bros. Discovery‘s drive to the net.
The basketball legend added a new wrinkle to Warner’s ongoing efforts to retain media rights to the NBA late Friday evening by announcing he would retire from his announcing duties on “Inside the NBA,” the influential TNT program he has co-hosted for years.
“I have made the decision myself,” Barkley said during televised remarks on NBA TV following Game 4 of the NBA Finals. “No matter what happens, next year is going to be my last year on television.”
Barkley said he would not move to another network, no matter how the NBA decides to parcel out a new package of rights it has largely negotiated with NBCUniversal, Disney and Amazon. Warner Bros. Discovery’s contract to show NBA games expires after the 2024-2025 season. Warner is hoping to carve out a small fourth package of games, but that bid is seen as unlikely. Warner is also examining its right to try and match the bids put forth by some of the others involved in the bidding, according to people familiar with the matter.
“There’s been a lot of noise around our network the last few months,:” Barkley said, referring to intense speculation over why Warner Bros. Discovery, grappling with significant debt, will be able to keep any NBA rights. “I just want to say, I talked to all the other networks, but I ain’t going nowhere other than TNT. But I have made the decision myself, no matter what happens, next year is going to be my last year on television.”
The decision likely surprised many, because Barkley and his “Inside the NBA” cohorts Kenny Smith and Ernie Johnson all signed new multi-year extensions to stay with the program in 2022. Shaquille O’Neal, the fourth member of the show’s studio team, struck a broader pact with the parent company in 2020.
“Our partnership with the NBA is very important to us and this long-term agreement with the ‘Inside the NBA’ team is recognition of their significance to that relationship,” said Luis Silberwasser, the executive who has been overseeing Warner’s sports operations, in a statement made at the time the new talent deal was announced.
Barkley joined “Inside the NBA” in 2000, and has gained notoriety for his blunt and sometimes controversial assessments on air. Barkley has never been afraid to call out a player’s mistakes or performance. In recent weeks, he has been highly critical of Warner Bros. Discovery’s handling of the rights discussion, lambasting executives for their lack of understanding of how losing NBA broadcasts will affect staffers who work on the production of his program.
Leagues take a lot of interest in the quality of studio programming that various media companies set up around their games. Ties between the NFL and ESPN had begun to fray over the Disney sports giant’s inability to find an announcing team for “Monday Night Football” following the exit of Mike Tiricio in 2015. ESPN executives felt they weren’t getting a stellar lineup of games, and NFL officials felt ESPN was investing more time and energy on other sports in its rights portfolio. In recent years, ESPN signed Joe Buck and Troy Aikman to call “MNF” games and also set up a separate telecast led by Peyton and Eli Manning.
More to come…