Figuring out how to watch NBA playoff games has been a struggle. And - sorry, sports fans - it's only getting worse.

By Lukas I. Alpert

NBA playoff games have been split up among myriad networks and streaming services, leaving fans scratching their heads about where to find the games. Matters become a bit simpler in the later rounds of the playoffs, though.

New York Knicks fans have had to navigate a plethora of streaming services and networks to watch all their team's games, which have appeared on Amazon Prime, NBC/Peacock, ESPN and ABC.

It's become a common headache during the NBA playoffs this year: You sit down to watch the game but struggle to figure out where to tune in.

And when you do find out where the game is being shown, you may need to pay for an additional service to watch it.

The challenge of navigating the new viewing landscape has been a lament among sports fans in recent years, as leagues have moved to open up the bidding for TV rights to streaming services, resulting in games being parceled out across an ever-growing landscape of options.

Since the NBA ended its long-running deal to air games on TNT and TBS, things have gotten far more confusing for fans. Games are now being shown across a variety of platforms, each requiring different subscriptions or setups to watch at home.

Key Words (July 2024): Charles Barkley: NBA took 'money over the fans' by choosing Amazon. Now TNT is suing.

This season, Reddit has been filled with posts asking where to find a particular game and complaining about how confusing it all has become. "Welcome to hell sports fans," one person posted.

The league says it is simply working to meet viewers where they are, which is increasingly on streaming platforms. But it also has made sure to keep many games on linear television as well, in order to be available to all fans.

The league noted that 26 of the 62 games that had been played as of Sunday, had been available on broadcast television, up from nine at the same point last year, when the bulk of the games were aired on cable.

The chaos that has emerged from the league's efforts to manage the transitioning of it audience, may be a sign of things to come for sports fans, as the NFL pushes to renegotiate deals with Fox (FOX), Paramount Skydance's (PSKY) CBS, Comcast's (CMCSA) NBC, and Walt Disney's (DIS) ABC and ESPN and bring streaming services to the table, in hopes that they might be willing to pay more.

Both the NBA and NFL have pushed to have more games appear on streaming services like Netflix (NFLX) and Amazon Prime Video (AMZN) in recent years as audience habits change. This past season marked the first time all basketball and football games were fully available on streaming services, and that came with a high price tag - subscriptions to all the services airing NBA games would have cost a fan close to $1,000 for the season.

The shift has left NBA fans who want to watch the first two rounds of the basketball playoffs to navigate a complicated maze of programming, with games from every series appearing on at least three separate networks or services.

For example, in the Round 1 series between the Detroit Pistons and the Orlando Magic in late April and early May, two of the seven games appeared on NBC, one was shown on Peacock only (or the premium NBCSN channel), two aired on Amazon Prime and one was shown on ESPN, while Game 7 was broadcast on ABC.

Some of those games were also available on certain streaming platforms - the NBC games also appeared on Peacock, while the ESPN and ABC games could be found on the ESPN app and FuboTV (FUBO).

The rest of the games in the round were similarly spread out across an array of services, with some games also available on Sling TV and DirecTV.

So in order to watch every game of their favorite team, fans who don't have a digital antenna to pick up the broadcast channels were required to subscribe to three streaming services or pay for cable and Amazon Prime.

Even those with an antenna would only be able to watch games on ABC and NBC and would still be required to pay for games on ESPN and Amazon Prime.

Things will become a bit simpler in the later rounds of the playoffs. The conference finals games will be split between NBC and ABC, and the NBA finals will be shown exclusively on ABC.

The broadcast networks have raised concerns that the push by sports leagues to move more games to streaming services could ultimately spell the end for them, as viewers increasingly cut the cord and shift away from cable.

Earlier this year Rupert Murdoch, the controlling shareholder of Fox, expressed his concerns about the matter to President Donald Trump at a dinner at the White House, the Wall Street Journal reported last week.

(Murdoch is also the controlling shareholder of News Corp (NWSA) (NWS), which owns Dow Jones, the publisher of MarketWatch.)

Since then, the Department of Justice has opened a probe into whether the NFL should continue to enjoy antitrust protections that have allowed it to collectively negotiate TV rights deals for all of its teams.

Over the weekend, Trump said he was concerned that the football league was "price gouging" by pushing its fans to subscribe to additional services in order to watch games.

"There's something very sad when they take football away from many, many people," Trump said on "Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson," which airs on local television stations owned by Sinclair (SBGI).

-Lukas I. Alpert

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05-11-26 1702ET