North American basketball league the NBA has agreed a multi-year expansion to its rights partnership with digital sports media company Perform in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
The new partnership will include more than 250 live NBA games per season with content licensed primarily for broadcast across Perform’s recently announced OTT service, which will launch in 2016.
During the 2015-16 season, games will be available through sports broadcaster Sport1 and the Telekom Basketball platform of German telecommunications firm Deutsche Telekom, under sublicensing deals with Perform.
Sport1 said it has agreed a two-season deal, running across the 2015-16 and 2016-17 campaigns, under which pay-television channel Sport1 US will show up to 120 games per season from the regular season, playoffs and NBA Finals.
Additionally, Perform said a free weekly game will continue to be streamed live for fans across Germany, Austria and Switzerland on nba.com/germany, the league’s official website, hosted on German-language sports portal Spox.com.
“The NBA’s partnership with Perform keeps us at the digital forefront as we continue to offer new ways for our fans to enjoy NBA games and content,” NBA associate vice-president for Germany, Nordics and Central Europe, Jan Menneken, said. “Fans in Germany, Austria and Switzerland will have access to more NBA games than ever before.”
The 2015-16 NBA season will feature four German players in the shape of Dirk Nowitzki of the Dallas Mavericks, Dennis Schröder of the Atlanta Hawks, Tibor Pleiß of Utah Jazz and Chris Kaman of the Portland Trail Blazers.