SiriusXM today set out its audio coverage of the 2026-27 NBA season, which starts tomorrow, October 20, with a three-game opening night. According to SiriusXM, every game from the regular season through The Finals will be available to its listeners, and every one of them sits inside the $5-a-month SiriusXM Sports Pass the company began selling on September 1. Listeners on the SiriusXM app or in cars with the latest 360L radios get both the home and visiting team broadcasts for each matchup. The release names hosts, analysts and channel numbers. It contains no advertising detail at all.

In Short

SiriusXM, the satellite radio company, says it will carry the radio call of every NBA game this season, plus a channel that talks about basketball all year. You can get all of it with the cheapest sports plan, which costs $5 a month, but hearing both teams' own announcers needs the phone app or a newer car radio. For advertisers, it means another season of live basketball audio on SiriusXM, though the company did not say how many people listen or how the ads are sold.

What SiriusXM is carrying

The release, dated October 19, 2026 and issued at 12:00 PM EDT from New York, makes three commitments. According to SiriusXM, it will offer "live broadcasts of every NBA game from Opening Night through the NBA postseason and The Finals," daily talk programming "every day of the year" on the SiriusXM NBA Radio channel, and access to all of it through the Sports Pass subscription.

The opening night schedule is spelled out in Eastern time. At 3:00 PM, the Boston Celtics visit the Detroit Pistons at Little Caesars Arena. At 7:00 PM, the New York Knicks, described in the release as "the reigning NBA Champion," host the Philadelphia 76ers at Madison Square Garden, with a 76ers roster that SiriusXM says "now features LeBron James and Jaylen Brown." At 9:30 PM, the Oklahoma City Thunder travel to San Antonio to play the Spurs, "the reigning Western Conference Champion," at the Frost Bank Center. All three games air on SiriusXM NBA Radio, which is channel 86 in vehicles and is also available in the SiriusXM app.

The champion labels match the last Finals PPC Land covered. The 2026 NBA Finals were a Knicks-Spurs series that opened in San Antonio on June 3, a rematch of the 1999 Finals between the same teams.

The release does not give a game count. A full regular season of 30 teams playing 82 games each produces 1,230 games, a PPC Land calculation based on the league's standard format rather than a SiriusXM figure, before the Play-In Tournament and playoffs are added.

Two feeds per game, with a hardware condition

The most technical line in the release concerns access. According to SiriusXM, every game "is available to SiriusXM listeners," but "those listening via the SiriusXM app, or in vehicles equipped with SiriusXM's latest generation 360L radios, get the added benefit of being able to access both the home and visiting team broadcasts for every matchup."

Read plainly, a listener with an older satellite-only radio gets a single broadcast of each game, while app and 360L listeners can choose between the two teams' own play-by-play crews. Across a full regular season, two feeds per game would mean up to 2,460 team broadcasts, again a PPC Land calculation. The release does not say which feed the satellite-only listener receives.

The distinction is about delivery. 360L combines the satellite broadcast with an internet connection through the car's cellular modem, which is how it carries streaming-only channels. PPC Land's explainer recorded that 360L was in more than 50% of new SiriusXM-enabled vehicles in the fourth quarter of 2025, in a fleet SiriusXM counts at about 180 million enabled vehicles, and that roughly 20% of self-pay subscribers were on 360L as of July 30, 2026. A majority of the listening base, on those figures, still relies on older hardware or the app for the second feed.

The same pattern appeared in SiriusXM's other sports deals this year. When SiriusXM added 42 Audacy stations across 29 US markets on July 21, 2026, 33 of them were restricted to the app or 360L vehicles. Its NFL release on September 2 also reserved home and visiting team broadcasts for app listeners.

Sports Pass and the plans that include the NBA

According to SiriusXM, NBA programming, "including every game broadcast," comes with "SiriusXM's most popular subscription plans, including Platinum, All Access and Music & Entertainment," as well as Sports Pass, "priced at $5 per month."

Sports Pass is the newer piece. SiriusXM unveiled it on July 29, 2026, at $5 a month or $49 a year for new US subscribers, with a September 1 launch timed to football season. That package bundled every home and away NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL game with 16 SiriusXM-owned sports channels, distributed brands such as ESPN Radio and Fox Sports on SiriusXM, and 23 Audacy sports stations. The NBA release repeats only the monthly price.

There is a geographic wrinkle. The release opens by saying SiriusXM will deliver "fans across North America" its NBA coverage, while PPC Land's July coverage described Sports Pass as a plan for new US subscribers. The October release does not say whether Sports Pass is sold in Canada.

What Sports Pass does commercially is clearer in the earnings record than in the release. SiriusXM ended the second quarter with about 33 million subscribers, 22,000 self-pay net additions and monthly self-pay churn of about 1.4%, which the company called its lowest ever, in its July 30 results. A February 2026 price rise on full-price plans had lifted revenue per user while contributing to some voluntary cancellations. A $5 sports tier sits well below those plans, and below the $9.99 music-only plan and the ad-supported SiriusXM Play, which SiriusXM priced at under $7 a month in July 2025. No Sports Pass subscriber figures have been published.

The talent list

Most of the release is a roster. SiriusXM NBA Radio's weekday schedule, according to SiriusXM, features:

  • The Starting Lineup, hosted by Frank Isola and former NBA center and forward Brian Scalabrine.
  • Give and Go, with Zach Harper and former NBA guard Antonio Daniels.
  • NBA Today, with Justin Termine and former NBA guard and forward Eddie Johnson.

Analysis comes from former players, coaches and front office executives: Robert Parish, Ryan McDonough, Greg Anthony, Amin Elhassan, Rosalyn Gold-Onwude, Sarah Kustok, Rick Mahorn and Sam Mitchell. The channel's other voices, described as "league insiders and radio veterans," are Gerald Brown, Brian Geltzeiler, Vince Goodwill, Jason Jackson, Mitch Lawrence, Gary Washburn, Joe Vardon, Ben Lyons, David Shepard and Marc Stein. According to SiriusXM, listeners can call in to the daily shows.

Before the season, SiriusXM NBA Radio produced one preview show for each of the 30 NBA teams, with hosts interviewing coaches, executives and players. Those are available on demand in the SiriusXM app. Unlike the September NFL release, which named five new hosts including Drew Brees, the NBA release does not identify any host as new for this season.

What the release leaves out

For advertisers, the omission is total. The release does not mention SiriusXM Media, sponsorship packages, ad load, rate cards, audience estimates or named advertisers. It does not say whether NBA game broadcasts carry national SiriusXM inventory, the teams' own local ads, or both, a question that becomes more pointed now that app and 360L listeners can choose between the home and away feeds.

Only the boilerplate touches the advertising business. It describes SiriusXM's "complete ecosystem of advertising solutions through SiriusXM Media and AdsWizz" and repeats the company's figure of approximately 255 million monthly listeners across its platforms. That number is not new: SiriusXM first used it in April 2026, and it includes audiences across Pandora, podcasts and resold YouTube audio inventory, as PPC Land detailed after SiriusXM Media's Built With Audio event. It is not an NBA audience.

Why sports audio matters to SiriusXM's ad business

The satellite service is a small part of SiriusXM's advertising revenue, and sports drive much of what growth it has. In the second quarter of 2026, advertising on the SiriusXM segment was $41 million, up 8%, out of total advertising revenue of $454 million. The company attributed that growth to sports demand, in particular the FIFA World Cup 2026 and college athletics, and built World Cup sponsorship packages for Bank of America, Lowe's, Verizon, Xfinity and McDonald's, PPC Land reported. The bulk of the advertising line, $413 million, came from Pandora and off-platform sales.

That gives the NBA season a measurable role. If World Cup packages were enough to move satellite ad revenue by 8% in a quarter, a season that runs from October to June on a 365-day channel is a long stretch of live inventory. SiriusXM's third-quarter results, when they arrive, will show whether the football and basketball start to the fall had a comparable effect. The release offers nothing to estimate it in advance.

The hardware question also connects to advertising. SiriusXM has said for some time that 360L's internet connection would eventually let it replace ads car by car during a broadcast break. As of September 2026, PPC Land's 360L explainer noted, that targeted in-car ad replacement had not launched, after its timeline slipped from late 2025 to early 2026. Live sports breaks are the obvious place such a capability would be used. The NBA release does not mention it.

The broader NBA media picture

SiriusXM's audio coverage runs alongside a reshaped video market. The 2025-26 season was the first of the NBA's 11-year agreements that brought Amazon Prime Video in as a national rights holder, with 66 exclusive regular-season games, the NBA Cup knockout rounds and, in six of the 11 years, conference finals. Canada joins Prime Video's international rights from the 2026-27 season. Prime Video's own opening doubleheader for this season is on Friday, October 23, starting with the Knicks at the Celtics at 7:00 PM ET.

Attention around the league's stars has also been measured outside television. During the June Finals, Taboola data showed NBA Finals content read about 1.5 times as often as World Cup content on game days in the US, with reader interest in Jalen Brunson up 2,006%. Brunson's Knicks feature in SiriusXM's opening night lineup, as does the Spurs' Victor Wembanyama.

Audio is a different buy from those video and content placements. It reaches people in cars, where SiriusXM has deep manufacturer relationships, and on phones. Other sellers have moved into live sports audio too: in February 2026, DAX US became the sales partner for Learfield's live college sports audio streams across more than 200 institutions, sold programmatically. SiriusXM's NBA release, by contrast, says nothing about how its basketball audio can be bought.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Sirius XM Holdings, through its SiriusXM subscription service and the SiriusXM NBA Radio channel, with hosts including Frank Isola, Brian Scalabrine, Zach Harper, Antonio Daniels, Justin Termine and Eddie Johnson.

What: SiriusXM said it will carry live broadcasts of every NBA game from opening night through The Finals, with daily NBA talk year-round, and that all of it is included in the $5-a-month SiriusXM Sports Pass as well as the Platinum, All Access and Music & Entertainment plans. App and 360L listeners can pick the home or visiting team broadcast. The release gives no advertising, sponsorship or audience details.

When: The release was issued today, October 19, 2026. The season opens tomorrow, October 20, with three games at 3:00 PM, 7:00 PM and 9:30 PM ET.

Where: Across North America, according to SiriusXM, on satellite channel 86 in vehicles and in the SiriusXM app. Sports Pass was described in July as a plan for new US subscribers.

Why: The NBA season is a long run of live programming for a service whose satellite ad revenue grew 8% in the second quarter on sports demand, and for a $5 sports tier SiriusXM is using to bring in listeners below the price of its full plans.