Basketball Hall of Famer and popular media personality Charles Barkley made some waves earlier this year. “Chuckster,” as he is known, announced that he’d be retiring from his media gig with Turner Sports once their broadcasting deal with the NBA expires following the 2024-25 season.
It has been a whole thing around the sports media world. TNT lost its broadcasting rights to the NBA after the league agreed to a record media rights deal. Said deal will include ESPN, ABC and Amazon Prime.
It really was a gut punch to Barkley and his co-hosts over at NBA on TNT. He was not too happy about the situation, initially indicating that retirement would be in the cards.
Barkley has now had weeks to reflect on the situation. He’s changing his tune big time.
“I love my TNT Sports family. My number one priority has been and always will be our people and keeping everyone together for as long as possible,” Barkley said in a statement, via Turner Sports. “We have the most amazing people, and they are the best at what they do. I’m looking forward to continuing to work with them both on the shows we currently have and new ones we develop together in the future.”
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Charles Barkley Unretires, Agrees To Long-Term Commitment With Turner Sports
By committing to Turner Sports long-term, we can now toss aside the idea of Barkley moving to ESPN or Amazon following the 2024-25 NBA season. That was seemingly a possibility.
In fact, ESPN was never really an option for Chuck.
“They’re not gonna work me like a dog,” Barkley said back in May. “ESPN Radio, ESPN2, ESPN Deportes. I mean, HELL NO! As much as I love ESPN, I just turned 61. The notion that I’m going to be working like a dog into my mid-60s, that’s definitely not going to happen.”
Barkley, 61, was looking at roughly $25 million annually if he did his “free agency” after next season. It’s not yet known what the financials of a potential new deal with Turner Sports are.
With TNT having lost NBA coverage, it looks like Barkley will change things up. He could now concentrate on TBS’ MLB coverage, college basketball work and college football stuff.
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