Blockbuster television deals and a new collective bargaining agreement have lifted the value of the average NBA team to a record $393 million, up 6.5 percent over last year.
No team has benefited more from the explosion in TV money than the Los Angeles Lakers, who have unseated the New York Knicks as the league’s most valuable franchise. The Lakers struck gold last year with a new 20-year television deal with Time Warner Cable worth an average of $200 million annually beginning with the 2012–13 season. The agreement drives the value of the Lakers up an NBA-high 40 percent to $900 million.
Time Warner will create two new regional sports channels to feature the Lakers, one in English and one in Spanish. The Lakers have by far the biggest TV audience of any NBA club, averaging 271,000 households on Fox Sports West last season, which was 73 percent higher than the next-most-watched team, the Chicago Bulls.
Continued on Yahoo Sports
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