The NBA and its three media partners are about to level up the sport’s advertising business.

According to interviews with key players on both the buy side and sell side, the NBA’s new media rights deal has brought with it a significant increase in advertiser interest, with brands (both returning and new) desperately seeking to capture more attention in a media environment that remains deeply fragmented.

“The NBA looks to be in a much stronger position this year comparatively to last year,” says Sean Wright, chief insights and analytics officer for Guideline, a firm that tracks advertising spend across TV and streaming. And last season, per Guideline’s data, advertising spend rose by 15 percent to $1.52 billion.

But the interest from sponsors comes after enormous attention from media partners, which resulted in a massive 11-year, $76 billion haul for the league, with Disney retaining the primary package, which includes the NBA Finals, NBC returning to the sport after decades on the sideline, and streaming power player Amazon joining the fray.

“From a publisher perspective, everything we see in the data is for every time [the rights fees go] up, they’re able to get that money back in equal measure, and we haven’t seen any signs of that slowing,” Wright says. “So the sports business seems to still be a very profitable one.”

And the NBA’s media partners seem to agree.

“I have the perspective of having sold it for 15 years when I was back at Turner Sports, and in those 15 years, I never saw a period as strong as what we’ve seen in just this first year,” says Mark Marshall, the chairman of advertising and partnerships for NBCUniversal. “I think part of it is the fact that you still have these great players like Steph and LeBron, who are unbelievable, but you also have new talent coming in. What everyone’s looking for is that live event, but the NBA has a culture and style that comes with it. So the market has been so hot, we’ve reached all of our financial targets before the season has started.”

NBCUniversal, which will present a flagship national game on Sunday nights, joined by Tuesday games that will be regionalized, says that nearly 170 sponsors have signed on for coverage, with more than 20 percent being new to the company. All the key placements have sold out, including the presenting sponsorships for studio shows and game broadcasts.

“I think the NBA has really resonated, not only domestically, but globally, with a lot of the European and overseas stars coming over,” says Jim Minnich, senior vp in Disney’s ad sales division, adding that “we’re seeing a significant amount of new brands enter the NBA market every year.”

ESPN and ABC’s coverage has, so far, secured 218 advertisers, including 37 new ones, with spending from the grocery, footwear and telecom categories all surging by more than 100 percent compared to last season.

And Minnich says that Disney has been savvy in leveraging one of its new additions: Inside the NBA, the former TNT series that will join ESPN and ABC coverage for key games throughout the season.

“Over a third of our advertisers showed interest and bought Inside the NBA,” he says, noting that the show is new to Disney’s NBA coverage, though not new to NBA fans.

“We took something that’s already proven and garnered an asset, and then we really want to populate it around the live experience that we have,” Minnich says of the show’s impact. “We have the “A” package, and I think it’s really important, especially around the NBA Finals, where Inside the NBA has really never had an opportunity to sit next to, so I think items like that excite the ad community.”

During the 2024-2025 season, Disney saw its NBA ad revenue rise by 20 percent, compared to 9 percent for TNT Sports, which was in its final year of live coverage. Disney (and the NBA for that matter) think that the iconic studio show will find a wider audience and advertising impact at its new home.

But the schedule is also working in the NBA’s favor, with the NBA playoffs pushing into late spring and early summer, an otherwise quiet time for live sports, with the NFL, college football and college basketball all over for their seasons.

All three partners are seeking year-round sports exposure, and the NBA deals give them key games during a key time of year.

“Where it sits in the calendar I think is really, really important,” Minnich says.

Amazon, for its part, will not only get some playoff games, but also the Emirates NBA Cup and the SoFi NBA Play-In Tournament, giving it key games outside of Thursday Night Football season.

And while the tech giant has leaned on technology to enable sponsors who offer their products on Amazon to sell directly to fans, the interest goes beyond consumer products.

“Even for non-endemics, we’re seeing some of them that don’t sell products on Amazon build experiences on Amazon.com so that they can continue the conversation with the customer,” says Amy McDevitt, head of sports brand partnerships for Prime Video.

Amazon, like Disney and NBC, have secured top-shelf sponsors for its game coverage and studio shows (in fact NBCUniversal will be a sponsor of Amazon’s NBA coverage, with its Universal Orlando Resort sponsoring The Crossover in between doubleheaders).

Danielle Carney, head of U.S. video and live sports sales for Amazon Ads, says that the tech giant has taken the learnings from its NFL Thursday Night Football partnership and leveraged it for the NBA.

Perhaps nowhere is that more evident than on Black Friday, which Amazon is hoping to turn into a sports holiday (a “natural tentpole,” as McDevitt says), with NBA games and a key NFL game punctuating the day.

“On Black Friday [last year], we saw QR codes actually pop because I think it was more native to the day, and people were ready to shop all day,’ Carney says, noting that the company is using the games to drive actual sales through Amazon. “So it was a little bit more native, but still, interactivity outperformed QR codes on that day, so we know it’s just more inherent and natural, because you’re already in Prime.”