Charles Barkley will stay at TNT despite the network losing the NBA’s media rights at the end of the 2024-25 season. It’ll be the last year of ‘Inside The NBA’ as we’ve known it for the last two decades, with the futures of the staff and crew still uncertain. Barkley slammed TNT for not providing clarity on what will happen with them in a recent interview with Bill Simmons on his podcast.
“I have zero idea what we’re gonna do. What makes it even funnier — they don’t even have no idea what we’re gonna do.”
“I’m sitting in this meeting in Philly, [they’re] like, we wanna keep doing the show. I’m like, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘We wanna keep y’all together. Well, I would consider that because I want all my friends to keep their jobs. I said, ‘What are we going to do? They’re like, ‘We haven’t figured that out yet,’ I’m like, ‘What?'”
“We won’t have basketball. What the hell are we going to do? That’s the thing that’s fascinating. I know we have one more year with the NBA. Then, we’re going to lose it, and they want to do the show for at least another year. But I’m like, we don’t even have basketball. We’re going to have to pay for highlights.”
Barkley has been with TNT since 2000 and signed a 10-year contract extension in 2022 which was called one of the biggest talent deals in television history. He will fulfill the obligations on that contract until 2032 instead of leaving the network to join someone with NBA media rights, but what exactly he’ll do seems unclear.
There have been rumors that the show will remain intact, either on a highlight-sharing agreement where TNT will have to pay the NBA or one of its three media partners or as a general sports show where they discuss everything from around the sporting world. Ernie Johnson and Barkley are already confirmed to stay with the network, with Kenny Smith and Shaquille O’Neal‘s futures unclear.
Charles Barkley Left Over $100 Million On The Table To Stay With TNT
Barkley would have been the biggest free agent in sports media if he chose to leave his TNT contract at the end of the 2024-25 season, with new media partners NBC and Amazon reportedly interested. However, Barkley decided to stay.
He recently revealed that he left a fortune of over $100 million on the table to stay so that he could protect the Inside The NBA staff from losing their jobs.
“A minimum of $100 million, a minimum. It was a great feeling, and I want to thank all of those networks for reaching out to me, it was really humbling and cool. It was really humbling and cool, to be honest with you… even though they were throwing crazy numbers I was like damn. But as long as I got my people safe at TNT I feel really good.”
Barkley will be on some sort of a sports show with Johnson which will likely retain the same crew that’s been working on Inside The NBA. Whether Shaq or Kenny stay around for that remains to be seen, but it’ll be interesting to see what the next phase of this show could be after over 35 years on the air.
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