ESPN Africa, the regional pay-TV sports arm of the US broadcasting giant, has secured ‘exclusive’ English-language pay-TV rights across sub-Saharan Africa for the upcoming 2026 NBA finals, as part of a multi-year agreement with the elite US basketball competition.
ESPN will showcase every game of the finals, beginning on June 3 and running through June 19, with the Eastern Conference champion New York Knicks set to face off against either the Oklahoma City Thunder or the San Antonio Spurs.
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Games will be aired live, which will be 2:30 AM Central Africa Time.
Going forward across the multi-year agreement, ESPN Africa will air NBA Sunday Night games across the regular season campaign, followed by playoff coverage that includes both conference final series’, and the NBA Finals.
Kyle de Klerk, director of sports at The Walt Disney Company Africa, has said:The NBA is one of the biggest and most celebrated sports properties in the world, with an incredibly passionate fan base across Africa.
"We are thrilled to bring audiences exclusive access to the NBA Finals over the next three seasons, alongside the Conference Finals and Sunday Night games. From superstar players and unforgettable rivalries to dramatic playoff moments, this is world-class basketball entertainment at its very best."
Coverage will be disseminated across ESPN’s linear channels, with broadcasts also available on the Disney+ OTT servie in the the South African market also.
This deal comes only a few weeks after the SportyTV broadcaster acquired free-to-air rights for the NBA spanning Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa, putting ESPN Africa in direct competition in a number of markets.
A growing portion of the NBA’s player base hails from Africa, most prominently Philadelphia 76ers star Joel Embiid (who was born in Cameroon but represents the US).
Other prominent names include Pascal Siakam (Cameroon), Jonathan Kuminga and Bismack Biyombo (DR Congo), Adem Bona and Josh Okogie (Nigeria), Mouhamed Gueye (Senegal), and Khaman Maluach and Duop Reath (South Sudan).
Media giant Canal Plus holds rights to the NBA in the English and Portuguese-speaking areas in Africa through a deal secured last November.
Through that agreement, games are shown on Supersport after Canal Plus took control of the channel through its acquisition of African TV heavyweight Multichoice.
The NBA playoffs thus far has drawn strong domestic viewership increases in the US that international broadcasters will likely seek to replicate.
The rivalry between the Thunder and the Spurs in particular has been brewing across the 2025-26 campaign, and the prospect of a playoff series between the two will have been attractive for broadcasters, with NBC the big winner in game one.
Game one of the Western Conference Finals (WCF) series between the San Antonio Spurs and the Oklahoma City Thunder averaged 9.16 million viewers across the NBC linear channel and the Peacock streaming service.
This was the largest ever audience for a WCF opener, and the most-watched Conference Finals opener in general since the Eastern Conference Finals (ECF) matchup between the Miami Heat and the Chicago Bulls in 2011.
High viewership has been the trend across the 2025-26 NBA season, the first of a new media rights cycle, and the playoffs have been no exception.
NBCUniversal-owned networks have averaged 5.8 million per game through 21 games of the playoffs, with Disney-owned ESPN and ABC also strong at 4.2 million, and streaming-only Prime Video averaging 3.8 million.
