Coupang Play rounds out sports offering with NBA rights - Sportcal

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Coupang Play, the streaming service run by the titular South Korean e-commerce giant, has secured the rights to US basketball's elite NBA competition.

Coupang Play customers with the Sports Pass add-on will be able to watch at least seven games per week throughout the season with Korean-language commentary.

This will include showpiece fixtures such as the NBA All-Star Game, as well as the postseason playoffs and season-ending NBA finals.

Coupang will also produce shoulder content and ancillary programming around the NBA season, including pre- and post-game analysis, as well as self-produced cultural content surrounding the league, to grow its presence in the Korean market.

The OTT service replaces rival streamer SpoTV as the league's broadcast outlet in the country.

South Korea has only ever had one player enter the NBA, center Ha Seung-Jin, who played two seasons for the Portland Trailblazers between 2004 and 2006.

Despite that, basketball, and the NBA in particular, is popular in Asia, and in the 2024-25 campaign had broadcast deals across the continent with the likes of Japan's WOWOW, Malaysia's Astro, Indonesia's Champions TV, One Sports in the Phillipines, and four Chinese broadcasters (CCTV, Great Sports, SiTV & Tencent).

In the 2024-25 campaign, South Korean food company Bibigo was the jersey patch partner of the Los Angeles Lakers franchise in a deal brokered in 2021 that will run through the 2025-26 season.

The deal with Bibigo is understood to be worth around $100 million in total ($20 million per season).

Coupang Play boasts several top-tier sports rights in South Korea, including the domestic soccer championships K League 1 and 2, as well as the top-flight soccer competitions of Germany and Spain, motorsport's Formula 1, and American football's NFL.