Basketball — Where to Watch
The NBA rights changed hands completely for 2025-26, and the change is the single most misreported fact in sports streaming. Anyone who tells you the NBA is on TNT is describing a deal that ended two seasons ago. The other half of the story is that basketball outside the US is much less fragmented than football — one subscription usually covers a whole league.
| Country | Who shows it | Free option |
|---|---|---|
| US | ABC and ESPN, NBC and Peacock, and Amazon Prime Video. NBA League Pass covers out-of-market games. | Games on ABC are broadcast over the air, so they are free with an antenna. |
| UK | Sky Sports, on an 11-year deal signed from 2025-26, with over 100 live games a season and the WNBA added from 2026-27. Amazon Prime Video carries some games too. | None confirmed. |
| Canada | TSN carries the NBA and sells it as a streaming subscription; TSN Premium adds 75 extra games. Sportsnet+ carries the Raptors. | None confirmed. |
| Australia | Kayo Sports. | None confirmed. |
| Germany | WOW carries NBA; DAZN carries EuroLeague and has NBA rights in some European markets. | None confirmed. |
| France | DAZN carries Betclic ÉLITE, the French domestic league, alongside its other basketball rights. | None confirmed. |
| Spain | Movistar Plus+ carries the NBA and EuroLeague; DAZN carries Liga Endesa and the NBA. | Movistar’s free tier exists but its own description suggests it carries no live sport. |
| India | Basketball sits on the international services rather than with a single domestic broadcaster. Check the competition’s own site for the current holder. | None confirmed. |
One structural note before the money: the NBA is split between broadcast, cable and streaming in a way that means a US viewer cannot follow a season on one service, while a British viewer can. Sky’s deal is deliberately broad — more than 100 games plus the WNBA — because there is no domestic league competing for those slots.
Can you watch it free?
Almost never, and this is one of the few sports where that is straightforwardly true. The NBA has no free-to-air package anywhere in the markets we checked. In the US, the ABC games are free if you have an antenna, because ABC is a broadcast network — but that is a property of the network rather than a gift from the league. Everywhere else, the answer is a subscription or nothing.
The same applies to domestic leagues. Spain, Italy, France and Germany all put their basketball behind pay television, and unlike football, none of it falls under the listed-events rules that guarantee free coverage for certain international matches.
The cheapest legal route
- US, one team. NBA League Pass, at $16.99 a month for the single-device tier or $24.99 for Premium with three devices. Note the blackout rule: nationally televised games are blocked live and only appear after 6:00am ET the next day.
- UK. Sky Sports, which carries more than 100 games. A NOW day pass at £14.99 is the cheapest way to sample it without a contract.
- EuroLeague or domestic European leagues. DAZN, which holds Liga Endesa in Spain and Betclic ÉLITE in France.
- Canada. TSN Standard at C$24.99 a month covers the NBA; the Premium tier at C$29.99 adds 75 more games.
League Pass deserves a warning of its own. It is an out-of-market product, so the games people most want to watch — the national broadcasts — are exactly the ones it blocks. It is also not sold identically in every country. Check what your local version actually carries before assuming it is the same product.
Which channel shows the NBA now?
Does HBO Max have the NBA?
Is NBA League Pass the same everywhere?
Can I watch the NBA free anywhere?
Where to go next
Watching sport in the US in the UK in Canada in Spain DAZN country by country Which free trials still exist