Billionaire Michael Jordan's NBC deal ends after one season and a single interview

Michael Jordan is not expected to return to NBC's National Basketball Association coverage next season, ending a broadcasting arrangement that lasted one year and produced a single interview, Front Office Sports reported on Wednesday.

NBC announced Jordan as a "special contributor" on May 12, 2025, as the network prepared to bring professional basketball back to its schedule after more than two decades away. The NBA had signed an 11-year media rights agreement worth $76 billion, splitting coverage between NBC and its streaming service Peacock, Amazon and ESPN, and NBC leaned on nostalgia to sell its return. Jordan, who won six championships with the Chicago Bulls during the 1990s when NBC last carried the league, was the centrepiece of that pitch.

What the network never specified was what a special contributor would actually do. Jordan said at the announcement that the NBA on NBC had been a meaningful part of his career and that he looked forward to the launch in October. He joined a lineup that included Jamal Crawford and Reggie Miller as game analysts and Carmelo Anthony in the studio.

His entire contribution was one sit-down interview with Mike Tirico, NBC's lead broadcaster, cut into five pre-recorded segments and released across the season. The conversation drew praise for its depth but touched little on the current league. There were no follow-ups, no studio appearances and no playoff involvement.

That scarcity has a particular value attached to it. Jordan has given almost no extended television interviews about basketball since "The Last Dance," the ESPN documentary series about his final Bulls season that ran in 2020. The prospect of hearing from him regularly was the reason the signing registered as a coup.

Criticism built through the season. By January, Tirico addressed the disappointment on air, acknowledging the gap between what viewers expected and what they received, and indicating the network was not pursuing further Jordan content.

The financial terms have never been disclosed, and the figure that circulated widely was invented. An Instagram post in May 2025 claimed Jordan was earning $40 million a year, a sum that would have exceeded Tom Brady's $37.5 million annual contract with Fox Sports. Front Office Sports reported that a source described the number as inaccurate, noting it was roughly double what Charles Barkley earns from TNT. Several outlets subsequently confirmed the figure was wrong. NBC declined to comment then and declined again this week.

The invented number shaped how the season was judged. Viewers who believed Jordan was being paid $40 million measured five interview segments against that sum and found the arrangement wanting, when the agreement had probably always been limited in scope.

Jordan, 63, remains among the wealthiest figures in American sport. He built his fortune primarily through his royalty arrangement with Nike, whose Jordan Brand has operated as a separate business since 1997, and through the Charlotte Hornets, the NBA franchise he controlled from 2010 until selling his majority stake in 2023. He is also a co-owner of 23XI Racing, a NASCAR team he founded with the driver Denny Hamlin.

Whether NBC formally announces the end of the arrangement, or simply lets it lapse, has not been decided.