NBA Subsidiaries: What the League Owns and How It Makes Money
The NBA has been around for a long time, but it has more room to grow than any other American league. MLB is slow paced, safety issues are plaguing the NFL, and hockey just hasn’t been the same since its lockout. As for soccer and golf, well, Americans don’t care as much about them.
On the world stage, basketball is one of the most popular sports there is; only soccer draws more attention. The league’s income comes from broadcasting rights, tickets, concessions, sponsorship and merchandise, and a good part of that runs through companies the NBA owns or controls.
Breakdown Of All NBA Subsidiaries & Properties
All marketing and licensing for the league runs through a company called NBA Properties, Inc. It was incorporated in 1967 and is based in New York. If anyone wants to sell sneakers, basketballs, warm-up jackets, sweatshirts or anything else with an NBA logo on it, they need a license from this company.
A subsidiary is a different thing. It is a company that is more than 50% owned by a parent company. The NBA has several, and they are covered further down.
Who Owns NBA Teams?
The NBA has 30 teams, and most have one controlling owner with a group of minority partners behind him. The Atlanta Hawks, for example, are owned by a group of several investors.
Owners are usually billionaires who made their money in private equity, tech or real estate, and a few are former players. Take Wyc Grousbeck, who came from a venture capital firm that specialized in medical technology. His group bought the Boston Celtics in 2002 for $360 million and agreed to sell the team in 2025 at a valuation of $6.1 billion.
Is the NBA Privately Owned?
Yes. The NBA is not a public company and you can’t buy stock in it. It is an association of 30 privately owned teams. The owners sit on a Board of Governors, share national revenue such as television money, and hire a commissioner to run the league on their behalf. Each owner runs his own team: the budget, the staff and the contracts.
How Does The NBA Make Money?
From several places, starting with tickets. There are 1,230 regular-season games (30 teams playing 82 games each, two teams to a game). At an average of about 17,400 tickets a game, that is more than 21 million tickets a season, before the playoffs, where prices are outrageous.
If the average ticket runs about $125, the regular season alone is worth well over $2.5 billion at the gate. Then come the national television deals, which are the biggest piece, plus sponsorship, merchandise licensing and concessions.
What the NBA's national TV deals are worth each year
Average annual value, in millions of dollars.
Show the data behind this chart
Deal
Average per year ($M)
1979-82 (USA Network)
$0.5M
1986-90 (CBS)
$44M
1990-94 (NBC)
$150M
1994-98 (NBC)
$187.5M
1998-02 (NBC, Turner)
$660M
2002-08 (ABC/ESPN, TNT)
$766M
2008-16 (ABC/ESPN, TNT)
$930M
2016-25 (ABC/ESPN, TNT)
$2670M
2025-36 (Disney, NBC, Amazon)
$6900M
How Much Do NBA Owners Make Per Game?
This one is tricky. It depends on the draw of the team, the tickets sold, the concessions and the local TV deal. The more popular the team, the more money it brings in.
Owners also carry the expenses, and player salaries are the biggest by far. Estimates of what an average owner clears run from $100 million to $200 million a season, though some teams lose money on paper in a given year. The real payoff is the sale price, as the Celtics example shows.
Who pays for the current TV deal
Approximate yearly payments in the 11-year deal that started in 2025-26 (about $76 billion in total).
Show the data behind this chart
Partner
Per year
Disney (ABC/ESPN)
up to $2.6B
NBC / Peacock
$2.5B
Amazon Prime Video
about $1.8B
What the NBA Actually Owns
The WNBA. The women’s league was founded by the NBA in 1996 and played its first season in 1997. At the start the NBA owned every team collectively. Since 2002, teams have been owned individually, some by NBA owners (the Golden State Warriors own the Valkyries) and some by outside groups (Mark Davis, who owns the NFL’s Raiders, owns the Las Vegas Aces). The league has its own commissioner and its own draft, and it grew to 15 teams in 2026 with the arrival of Toronto and Portland.
The G League. The NBA’s minor league, formerly the D-League, has 31 teams for 2026-27. Thirty of them are owned by or tied to an NBA team, one for each franchise. The Mexico City Capitanes are the only team with no NBA parent. Teams use it to develop young players, late picks from the draft above all.
Media. NBA.com, the NBA App, NBA TV and League Pass all belong to the league. They are how it reaches fans outside the United States, who can’t watch on American television.
Licensing. The league doesn’t make jerseys or basketballs. It licenses the rights, through NBA Properties, to companies such as Nike, which has made the official uniforms since 2017.
Put together, these are the reason the NBA is more than 30 teams and a schedule. The teams compete; the league-owned businesses sell the whole thing.
