It’s Not You. NBA Streaming Is a Mess

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80 games this season for $30 per month

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After the flood of nostalgia brought on by watching Roundball Rock during NBC’s first NBA broadcast in more than two decades subsided, NBA fans were likely left with a mix of confusion and frustration over the first 10 days of the season. There are more national shows this year, but finding them is harder than it should be.

This season, it’s no longer as simple as turning on the TV and searching through two or three channels to find the game. Watching every national NBA game this season requires three separate streaming services. Life is hard enough; watching sports should not increase this feeling.

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The 2025-26 season marks the first under the NBA’s new media rights deal, which will end the NBA on TNT era and return games to NBC. It also pushes the NBA into the streaming era with games appearing on Peacock and Prime Video every week of the season, as well as on ESPN’s new direct-to-consumer streaming service.

Here’s what you need to know about the NBA’s new media landscape and where to find which games, which nights and which streaming services.

The NBA’s new broadcast partners

This season is the first of the new 11-year agreement between the NBA and its three media partners: Disney (ABC/ESPN), NBCUniversal (NBC/Peacock) and Amazon (Prime Video). There will be 247 national broadcasts in this trio this season, which far exceeds the 172 national matches last season.

Last year, you just needed one live TV streaming service like Sling or YouTube TV that offered ABC, ESPN, and TNT for national broadcasts every week of the season. Now, with exclusive Peacock games and the Prime Video roster, that convenience of a single streamer is as obsolete as the mid-range jumpshot.

Here is the breakdown of national broadcasts:

• ABC/ESPN: 80 regular season games
• NBC/Peacock: 100 regular season games and the All-Star Game
• Prime Video: 66 regular season games

Weekly schedule for the 2025-26 NBA season

There will be a national broadcast of the NBA four nights a week throughout the season:

• Monday: Peacock
• Tuesday: NBC and Peacock
• Wednesday: ESPN
• Friday: Amazon Prime

Beginning midseason, after the NFL and college football seasons conclude, the program will expand to all weeknights and weekend afternoons with these additions:

• Thursday: Amazon Prime
• Friday: ESPN
• Saturday afternoon: Amazon Prime
• Saturday night: ESPN and ABC
• Sunday afternoon: ESPN and ABC
• Sunday night: NBC and Peacock

One last item for NBA fans: Sports’ top studio show, Inside the NBA, will move from TNT to ESPN this season. The 21-time Emmy Award-winning series will still be filmed at its Atlanta studio and will still star Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal and Kenny Smith. What has changed is the scheduling of the show. Instead of weekly broadcasts, Inside the NBA will occur more sporadically around regular season marquee games, Christmas Day games and during the playoffs, including the conference finals and NBA Finals.

The 3 streaming services you need for the NBA season

While you can watch many games on ABC, ESPN, and NBC during the season with a cable TV or live TV streaming service, you’ll miss the streaming games only featured on Peacock and Prime Video.

For complete coverage, NBA fans will need to subscribe to a trio of streaming services: Peacock, Prime Video and ESPN for a combined total of $50 per month. (If you already subscribe to Amazon Prime for free two-day shipping and consider it a sunk cost, then ESPN and Peacock will cost you $41 per month.)

NBA games are returning to NBC for the first time since 2002. NBC and Peacock will broadcast 100 regular season games, including exclusive Peacock Monday night games and the All-Star Game. The doubleheaders will air on NBC and Peacock on Tuesday nights, with the preceding game airing on NBC in the Eastern and Central time zones and the final game airing on NBC in the Mountain and Pacific time zones. Starting February 1, NBC and Peacock will broadcast NBA games on Sunday nights.

You can stream every NBA broadcast on NBC with Peacock’s Premium plan for $11 per month. Read our Peacock review.

There’s nothing new about having NBA games on ABC and ESPN, but this season you can watch these games without cable TV or a live TV streaming service thanks to ESPN’s new direct-to-consumer streaming service.

For NBA fans, an ESPN Unlimited subscription will allow you to watch 80 regular season games, including games broadcast on ESPN and ABC. It will broadcast Wednesday night doubles throughout the season before adding Friday night doubles and Saturday night and Sunday afternoon games starting mid-season.

The ESPN Unlimited plan costs $30 per month (or $300 per year) and lets you stream all of ESPN’s linear networks: ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNews, ESPN Deportes, SEC Network, and ACC Network. You also have access to programming on ESPN on ABC, ESPN Plus, ESPN3, SECN Plus and ACCNX. Read our ESPN Unlimited review.

(There’s also an ESPN Select plan for $13 per month, which is essentially a rebranding of ESPN Plus. With it, you’ll have access to thousands of live games — think small college conferences, whose games you can’t watch anywhere else — but not the NBA.)

Prime Video will broadcast 66 regular season games this season, primarily Friday night doubleheaders that will include the group rounds of the NBA Cup tournament. It will also feature the round of 16 and championship game of the NBA Cup as well as a Black Friday game and two global games in Europe (January 15 in Berlin and January 18 in London). Also in January, after the NFL and college football seasons end, Prime Video’s NBA schedule will expand to include Thursday night and Saturday afternoon games.

Prime Video is included with an Amazon Prime membership for $15 per month or $139 per year. You can also subscribe only to Main video for $9 per month. Read our Prime Video review.

Local and out-of-market games

If you are, for example, a Celtics fan in Boston, a Knicks fan in New York, or a Lakers fan in Los Angeles and you care more about following your local team than watching national broadcasts, then you will need to subscribe to a television service that carries your team’s regional sports network. Most RSNs are part of FanDuel Sports Network or NBC Sports Network. The two live TV streaming services with the most RSNs are DirecTV and Fubo.

You can also subscribe to a FanDuel Sports Network RSN through Prime Video and an NBC Sports RSN through Peacock. Additionally, a handful of teams – the Dallas Mavericks, Lakers, New Orleans Pelicans, Phoenix Suns, Portland Trail Blazers and Utah Jazz – have an in-market streaming option through NBA League Pass.

In the meantime, NBA League Pass remains the choice for serious fans who want to be able to watch every out-of-market game every night of the season. The basic package with ads costs $110 for the season. The premium plan costs $160 for the season and replaces ads with the in-arena stream, adds the ability to download games and highlights for offline viewing, and lets you watch on up to three devices at once.