Charles Barkley criticized the NBA’s 11-year, $77 billion media rights deal on ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption,” saying the league has made it too difficult for fans to find games across the new broadcast landscape. “It is so difficult for fans to find the games now,” Barkley said. “I think we’ve done a disservice to the fans and to the game.”
The deal, signed in July 2024, moved NBA broadcasts away from TNT and distributed games across ESPN/ABC, NBC/Peacock, and Amazon’s Prime Video. Barkley pointed to the fragmentation as the core problem: “People don’t even know when the NBC games are on NBC, when they’re Peacock. They don’t know when the game’s on Amazon.” He said the league needs to ensure the long-term deal does not alienate its fan base while serving multiple network partners.
Barkley says fans are struggling to navigate games across NBC, Peacock, and Amazon
Barkley’s criticism centers on the viewing experience rather than the financial terms of the deal. Fans who previously tracked nationally televised games across two primary networks — ESPN and TNT — now need to monitor schedules across multiple platforms with different subscription requirements. The distinction between games airing on NBC’s broadcast network versus its Peacock streaming service adds another layer of confusion, as does Amazon’s Prime Video schedule operating on a separate calendar from the traditional broadcast partners.
The shift away from TNT, which carried NBA games for decades and built its studio programming around the league, removed a familiar access point for viewers. Barkley spent years as the centerpiece of TNT’s “Inside the NBA” coverage and has been vocal about the deal’s impact since the agreement was finalized.
NBA regular-season viewership at eight-year high despite Barkley’s broadcast criticism
The league’s viewership data complicates Barkley’s argument. The 2025-26 regular season has reached an eight-year high in viewership, and Commissioner Adam Silver has said young fans are engaging with games on streaming platforms “in record numbers.” The numbers suggest that while the fragmented broadcast schedule may frustrate some viewers, the overall audience has grown rather than contracted under the new arrangement.
The tension between Barkley’s criticism and the viewership trends reflects a broader divide in how different segments of the audience consume live sports. Traditional viewers accustomed to a simpler broadcast structure face a steeper learning curve, while younger audiences already subscribed to streaming platforms may find the games more accessible than they were under the previous deal. The NBA’s challenge over the remaining years of the 11-year agreement is maintaining tentpole events on strong national windows while ensuring that the everyday regular-season schedule does not lose casual viewers to the complexity of finding games.