nba12The NBA reached a lucrative TV deal today with ESPN and Turner Broadcasting, which both inked new broadcasting rights to league games through the 2024-25 season. But one of the more notable aspects of the partnerships have to do less with your TV and more with the Internet.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, ESPN is planning an online service that will stream live regular season games to fans without requiring a paid TV subscription.

This is a new development for ESPN, which already streams NBA games via its WatchESPN app, but only to those that already pay for access to a TV feed of ESPN.

ESPN hasn’t revealed many details of the online service as far as how the product would be packaged — individual games, or subscription-based. The WSJ notes that ESPN could license the online-only games to a company like Verizon.

In addition to WatchESPN, fans can already access live online streams to games that aren’t televised nationally or available in their market by paying for the NBA’s League Pass. It’s likely that the ESPN service would be cheaper, as League Pass subscriptions start at $149.

ESPN set numerous streaming records this summer during the World Cup, signifying a pattern of more and more people opting to stream live sporting events. The Super Bowl last year was most-watched live stream of a single sports event in history with an average of 528,000 viewers accessing FOX’s free stream of the game with 1.1 million concurrent viewers at one point.

Meanwhile, ESPN is dominating the digital sports arena, as the company announced earlier this month that it reached 82.4 million unique users across its digital properties in August, which was up 42 percent from this time last year and set a new internal record.

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