Turner Pays $275 Million to NBA for Cable Rights

Turner Broadcasting Systems and the NBA pushed the escalation in television rights fees even higher when they agreed today to renew their contract for $275 million over four years.

The league will be getting almost three times more per season than it gets under the $50-million two-year deal with Turner that expires next summer.

Just three weeks ago, NBC took the NBA’s network rights away from CBS with a $600-million four-year contract. And a week ago, CBS agreed to pay $1 billion over seven years to keep the NCAA basketball tournament.

The $875 million that the NBA will get from the sale of network and cable rights will push the average salary in the NBA past $1 million next season since players are guaranteed 53% of the league’s gross revenues. Each of the 27 teams will receive an average of $8.102 million per season from the new television contracts; they are getting slightly more than $3 million each this season.