Amazon Prime will air an annual Black Friday NBA game or two following the streamer’s NFL game when its basketball package is scheduled to start next season.

Meanwhile, NBC, whose package also starts next season, will offer Tuesday night regional primetime games, with one contest starting at 8 p.m. ET just in the Eastern and Central time zones, and another 8 p.m. PT game just in the Pacific and Mountain Time zones.

These are some of the newsy tidbits Awful Announcing culled from the unsealing today of Amazon’s and NBC’s contracts with the NBA. Warner Bros. Discovery is suing the NBA, alleging it matched the Amazon offer, and as part of that lawsuit the NBC and Prime deals were filed under seal. But earlier this month the judge overseeing the case ruled some of the contracts had to be unsealed and that occurred today.

Much of the contracts on the public docket remains redacted, like financials (even though macro terms have been publicly reported) to even the number of tickets teams are required to grant the media companies.

The Amazon contract runs 82 pages with exhibits, while the NBC one is a far more efficient 60 pages with exhibits.  The following are some more details we flushed out of the contracts.

Amazon

* Amazon gets 60 regular season games, plus the NBA Cup. Most of its games will fall on Thursday and Friday, and some on Saturday. It gets all the play-in games, nine to 17 games in the first and second rounds of the playoffs, and a conference finals in six of the 11 years of the contract.  

* It will deploy features viewers of TNF are familiar with, like X-Ray, rapid-recap and key plays. Other categories are listed as needing NBA approval including AI-powered visualizations, AWS data, and betting and shopping integration into the broadcast.

* The contract envisions interactive ads that allow the viewer to buy merchandise they see on screen, presumably like a player jersey or a baseball cap. The NBA also has the right to receive branding on Amazon delivery boxes or vans.

* In the event of a work stoppage, Amazon will continue to pay, and receive deductions off its payments once play has resumed.

NBC

* NBC receives two preseason games and 100 regular season games, falling largely on Mondays and Tuesdays, with at least eight on Sundays. NBC gets an annual game on President’s Day, MLK Day, the day of the NCAA Championship game, and Veterans Day, as well as one on New Year’s Day 2029. It also gets a minimum of 22 total playoff games in rounds one and two, and a conference finals in six of the 11 seasons of its contract. There are no Christmas Day games. NBC gets all of All-Star weekend, excluding the celebrity game. NBC also gets a season tip-off doubleheader.

* It sounds like the NBC lead in programming for the NBA will be called “NBA Tonight.”  The contract terms name a “new ancillary programming block,” though the text after that phrase is redacted.

• NBC’s streaming platform Peacock is only mentioned twice, which makes sense as the NBA chose NBC for its broadcast reach. “Licensee will create an NBA-branded hub on the Peacock home page for all Games and related content.”

* NBC is required to advertise the NBA on a range of its sports and non sports programming, including: the Olympics, Super Bowls, Sunday Night Football, the EPL, FIFA, the Thanksgiving Day Parade, The Today Show and The Tonight Show.

Not surprisingly, both contracts require data sharing among the parties, but it is particularly pronounced with Amazon. “Licensee will also provide NBA with access to unique customer marketing features, including the ability for NBA to target and build direct marketing activations for viewers watching the Games … (which will) combine this NBA data set with Licensee advertising data sets.”  That’s one way of saying the NBA and Amazon will know who is watching and to expect sales pitches.

The WBD lawsuit, which alleges the NBA ignored the TNT parent’s right to match provision in its current deal, is in the motion to dismiss stage. The judge has scheduled a December 17 hearing to hear arguments. If WBD’s lawsuit survives that stage, a trial could occur in the next year barring a settlement.