With the fate of its media rights deal with the NBA still up in the air, TNT Sports is delving further into college basketball.
The Atlanta-headquartered sports division has struck a new six-year rights agreement to provide coverage of Big East college basketball games through the 2030-2031 season.
The deal includes at least 65 regular season games per season, including 50 men’s games and 15 women’s games, TNT Sports announced Thursday. The games will air across TNT, TBS, truTV and Max, beginning with the 2025-2026 season.
The Big East Conference also struck deals with Fox Sports and NBC Sports to air games, which maximizes its coverage across all formats: broadcast, cable and streaming.
This is the third media rights deal TNT Sports has secured in two months. Two weeks ago, parent company Warner Bros. Discovery announced TNT Sports would air the French Open in the United States over the next 10 years. In May, TNT Sports reached an agreement with ESPN to broadcast early-round College Football Playoff games starting this postseason.
TNT Sports, owned by parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, is bolstering its roster of live sports as its longstanding — and coveted — contract with the NBA hangs in the balance.
After more than three decades of broadcasting NBA games, TNT is at risk of losing its media rights package to Comcast’s NBC, Disney’s ESPN and Amazon. According to the Wall Street Journal, the NBA is nearing an 11-year deal with the three media companies. It’s possible that Warner Bros. Discovery could carve out a fourth package, but it would likely be one much less comprehensive than its current media deal.
Losing the rights to the NBA would be a blow to TNT, which has long counted on the coverage to drive ratings and advertising revenue. But the new Big East deal helps to bolster TNT’s full-season basketball coverage outside of the NBA. TNT also holds the rights to the Hall of Fame Las Vegas college season tip-off event, the Invesco QQQ Legacy Classic in-season HBCU showcase and the shares the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship tournament with CBS Sports. In April, TNT Sports confirmed it also would broadcast at least 16 regular-season Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) games each season in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
The Big East has 11 teams primarily in the northeast that competes in NCAA Division I in 10 men’s sports and 12 women’s sports. The conference includes the University of Connecticut, which won the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship in both 2023 and 2024.
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