Hawks become first NBA team to stream local games exclusively on Prime Video, opening a new front in the league's rights race

The Atlanta Hawks have become the first NBA team to stream their local broadcasts exclusively on Amazon Prime Video, a one-year direct-to-consumer deal announced Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026. Under the agreement, games that are not exclusive national broadcasts will be available to Prime members within the team's television territory, which spans parts of Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina and Mississippi. No additional subscription or add-on channel is required, according to the Hawks and Prime Video.

The deal covers the digital exclusive rights to 74 of the team's 82 regular-season games, with the remaining contests reserved for national broadcast partners. The number of games covered by the Prime Video and local TV arrangements can fluctuate based on factors including the preferences of national media partners. Prime members can watch through a web browser or the Prime Video app on compatible televisions, phones, tablets and game consoles. Raycom Sports will produce the local broadcasts, and the Hawks open their 2026-27 season Wednesday, Oct. 21, against the Orlando Magic.

Crucially, the streaming deal runs in parallel with free over-the-air television. Under a partnership announced in July, the same 74 games will air on Gray Media's WANF-46 and the Peachtree Sports Network across Georgia. Hawks president of business enterprise and chief commercial officer Andrew Saltzman told Deadline the team viewed the demise of Main Street Sports as a chance to regroup, saying the club did not want to be in the direct-to-subscription selling business but wanted to be in the ubiquity business. Requiring only a basic Prime membership, rather than a Hawks-specific add-on, was a stated priority for the team's front office and ownership group.

The move follows the dissolution of Main Street Sports, one of the largest and most troubled regional sports network groups, which left 13 NBA teams scrambling for new local broadcast homes. All 13 have now cemented their 2026-27 plans: five are streaming exclusively on DAZN, two are trying a hybrid direct-to-distributor, cable and satellite template in the Thunder and Clippers, and six are pursuing a dual over-the-air and streaming model, including the Hawks, Bucks, Magic, Hornets, Pistons and Heat. All of these arrangements are one-year deals or contracts with one-year escape clauses.

For Amazon, the Hawks deal extends a strategy of picking up rights caught up in the RSN collapse. Prime Video already streams games for more than 30 teams across Major League Baseball, the NBA, the NHL and the WNBA, and it holds exclusive digital rights to seven NHL teams: the Ducks, Hurricanes, Blue Jackets, Stars, Wild, Kraken and Blues. Industry sources cited by Sports Business Journal believe the undisclosed Hawks deal is worth low seven figures and gives Amazon 85 percent of the team's digital ad inventory. Prime Video's head of sports partnerships, Charlie Neiman, described the deal as another step in the company's growing local sports portfolio.

The broader stakes involve the NBA's centralized streaming hub, expected to launch next season and place anywhere from 20 to 29 teams on a single service. DAZN has spent recent months acquiring exclusive or digital local rights to 10 NBA teams, plus five more operated through its ViewLift subsidiary, tying roughly half the league to its platform. Amazon's Hawks deal is widely read as an audition for that hub, the same way DAZN's portfolio functions as one. An industry source told Sports Business Journal that Amazon is really looking for distribution right now. Four other NBA teams are technically accessible on Prime Video this season, though non-exclusively, through channel store arrangements involving the Bulls, Wizards, Knicks and Nets.

The Hawks arrangement is a test of whether a basic-membership streaming model paired with free broadcast TV can reach more households than the old RSN pay-TV bundle. It also sets a benchmark for how teams value local digital rights in a year when nearly every club's deal expires. If the dual model drives measurable reach in the five-state footprint, expect more clubs to demand similar terms, and expect Amazon, DAZN and YouTube to bid aggressively when the league's centralized hub goes to market.