The Atlanta Hawks will make locally available games available through Prime Video across a five-state Southeast region beginning with the 2026-27 NBA season. The arrangement covers Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina and Mississippi, and applies to broadcasts that are not exclusive to national outlets.
For Prime Video subscribers in that footprint, the Hawks games covered by the agreement will be included at no additional charge. The team’s move sits alongside a separate over-the-air television arrangement with Gray Media, creating two paths for local viewers to follow games that are not carried exclusively by national broadcasters.
What Hawks viewers are set to receive
The important qualifier is that this is a local-market rights deal, not a promise that every Hawks game will stream on Prime Video everywhere. Nationally exclusive broadcasts are excluded. In practical terms, a game selected for exclusive national coverage follows that national distribution arrangement rather than the Hawks’ local TV and streaming plan.
The geographic scope is notable. Prime Video’s Hawks coverage will span:
- Georgia
- Alabama
- Tennessee
- South Carolina
- Mississippi
The team has specifically identified cities including Nashville, Charlotte and Charleston as places where the streaming partnership extends the Hawks’ availability. Andrew Saltzman, the Hawks and State Farm Arena president of business enterprise and chief commercial officer, said maximizing reach was central to the decision.
That emphasis helps explain the combined model. The Gray Media agreement puts non-nationally televised regular-season games on WANF and the Peachtree Sports Network, while Prime Video provides a subscription-streaming route through a much wider regional footprint. Under the terms described, 74 Hawks games are scheduled to air on over-the-air television or stream on Prime Video.
Over-the-air TV and streaming are complementary here
“Over the air” means a station can be received by antenna in its broadcast area, rather than requiring a cable or streaming subscription. WANF and the Peachtree Sports Network are the outlets named for the Hawks’ in-market, non-national regular-season telecasts. Gray’s Raycom Sports will produce the games.
Prime Video, meanwhile, is the digital destination within the five covered states for subscribers. The “no additional cost” language matters, but it has a precise meaning: eligible games are included with a Prime Video subscription; it does not mean the streams are universally free to viewers who do not subscribe.
For fans, the setup potentially reduces a familiar local-sports problem: knowing that a team has games somewhere, but not knowing which service or channel holds a given night’s broadcast. It does not eliminate the need to check a game’s listing. National exclusivity remains a variable, and broadcast access can differ by location and platform. Still, the Hawks are establishing clearly identified local television and streaming homes for the games within this arrangement.
Why the Hawks needed a new local-rights plan
The Hawks were among 13 NBA teams that had previously relied on Main Street Sports Group for regional rights. That company entered bankruptcy after subscriber losses, forcing affected teams to establish new approaches to local distribution.
A regional sports rights agreement is the deal that determines who can show a team’s games in its local territory. It is separate from league-wide national packages. When a regional distributor can no longer maintain those rights, teams must replace an important fan-access channel, often while balancing reach, production, television carriage and streaming availability.
Saltzman noted that the clubs affected by Main Street Sports Group did not all have the same circumstances or make the same decisions. The Hawks’ answer is a blended approach: free, antenna-based local television in its home market through Gray Media, plus Prime Video streaming across five states. Saltzman characterized the resulting reach as arguably one of the largest footprints.
That is also why it would be inaccurate to frame the Prime Video component as simply replacing local TV. The available details point to a distribution expansion built around two formats. Antenna television addresses a traditional local audience; streaming can make the same club easier to reach beyond the immediate broadcast-market boundaries covered by a single station.
What remains outside the announced details
The announcement establishes the participating states, the non-national limitation, the TV outlets, the production partner and the planned total of 74 games across over-the-air television or Prime Video. It does not provide a game-by-game schedule for which platform will carry each eligible matchup. Fans will still need to consult individual listings as the season progresses.
Nor should “all broadcasts that are not exclusive to national outlets” be interpreted as a change to the national NBA rights structure. The information provided concerns local Hawks availability. Nationally exclusive games remain outside the local Prime Video deal.
The distinction is particularly useful for anyone who follows teams across services. A streaming home can be broad without being unlimited: territory matters, subscription status matters, and national selections matter. In this case, the five-state territory is the key boundary for Prime Video access, while WANF and the Peachtree Sports Network are the named over-the-air outlets for in-market regular-season coverage.
Season timing and the larger distribution shift
Atlanta is scheduled to open its 2026-27 regular season on Wednesday, October 21, at the Orlando Magic. The Prime Video availability begins with that season.
For the Hawks, the immediate practical goal is straightforward: preserve access after the collapse of a prior regional-rights holder while widening the club’s reach in the Southeast. For viewers, the clearest takeaway is equally simple: Prime Video subscribers in the five specified states will be able to watch eligible Hawks broadcasts without paying a separate fee beyond their existing Prime Video access, while non-national regular-season games will also have an over-the-air outlet through the Gray Media deal.
Prime Video is positioning the Hawks arrangement as part of an expanding local-sports portfolio and described the objective as making it easier for fans to find teams they follow. The value of that promise will depend on clear individual-game scheduling, but the announced structure gives Hawks supporters two defined routes to locally available games rather than a single regional-sports channel.
Digital distribution continues to affect entertainment well beyond live sports; for a very different example of a title reaching mobile platforms, see The House of Tesla: Definitive Edition’s iOS and Android release. The Hawks agreement is not a game release, of course, but it reflects the same basic consumer question: which platform carries the thing people want to access, and under what access terms?
