The Atlanta Hawks are taking their local regular season to Amazon Prime Video, making the franchise the first NBA team to stream its full slate of locally available games on the service. The deal covers a projected 74 of 82 regular-season games, with nationally televised contests carved out, and runs alongside free local broadcasts from Gray Media.
The deal in numbers
- 74 of 82 regular-season games are projected to stream on Prime Video.
- Gray Media will simulcast games on WANF-TV and other free platforms.
- Access is geofenced to Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina and Mississippi.
- The final game count can shift with the Hawks’ win-loss record.
Prime Video holds the digital exclusive for those games. Viewers inside the five-state footprint can watch with a Prime subscription; outside it, the telecasts are not part of the deal. The Hawks open their 2026-27 season on Wednesday.
Why a team chose ubiquity
The move follows the dissolution of Main Street Sports, one of the largest regional sports network operators. Across the NBA and other leagues, the RSN collapse has forced teams to rethink how local rights are packaged. All but a handful of top markets have seen the older pay-TV model come apart.
“We didn’t want to be in the direct-to-subscription selling business,” Andrew Saltzman, Hawks President of Business Enterprise and Chief Commercial Officer, said. “We wanted to be in the ubiquity business.”
That framing matters. Instead of asking fans to buy a standalone team streaming product, Atlanta is placing games where subscribers already are, while keeping a free local TV option through Gray Media. Prime Video Head of Sports Partnerships Charlie Neiman called the arrangement a step toward a “one-stop destination” for local sports.
The reach-first framework
Think of local sports distribution on two axes: exclusivity and friction. The old regional sports network sat high on both—expensive to reach and prone to carriage gaps. A team DTC app lowers exclusivity but raises friction: fans must find, buy and stream a niche product. The Hawks are testing a different lane: existing Prime subscriptions plus free over-the-air local TV.
That is the strategic takeaway. The asset is not the subscription; it is the fan’s weekly habit.
What it means for rights planners
The Hawks deal is a useful case study in reach-first sports distribution. Prime Video says it now streams games for more than 30 teams across MLB, the NBA, NHL and WNBA, with exclusive rights to seven NHL teams before adding the Hawks.
The template: pair a paid streaming exclusive with a free local linear simulcast, restrict it to the team’s home market, and spend marketing effort on fan education rather than sign-ups. For advertisers and media planners, the value shifts from subscription conversion to local reach and sponsor inventory.
The test is whether this hybrid model travels to other NBA franchises. If it works in Atlanta, expect more teams to choose reach through existing platforms over building their own paywalled product.
Source: Deadline
