WBD Reportedly Trying to Carve Fourth NBA Rights Package out of Failing RSN Inventory
For a company that doesn’t ‘have to have’ the NBA, WBD is looking more and more desperate to retain its rights at any cost.
Warner Bros. Discovery isn’t letting the NBA go without a fight… or two… or three. The company’s prospects for acquiring a package of NBA regular season and playoff games equivalent to what it has now in the league’s next national broadcasting rights deal seems to grow smaller every day, but that doesn’t mean that CEO David Zaslav is ready to throw in the towel just yet. Puck News has new details on WBD’s new focus, a fourth package of games that could be carved out that would allow it to keep the NBA on TNT past the 2024-25 season.
Key Details:
- WBD’s prospective fourth package could be made up of games that were formerly local broadcasts converted into national games.
- Previous reports indicated the league was unlikely to ascent to a fourth package of rights in its next deal, but could change its mind on that point.
- Without the NBA, WBD could have a much harder time reaching carriage contracts for TNT.
Despite Zaslav’s 2022 claim that WBD didn't “have to have” the NBA, the company is going down just about every avenue available to it to try to keep the league’s rights. Its latest gambit is to see if the league will allow it to carve out a fourth package of rights; previous reports indicate that the league didn’t want to water down the three bundles of games it had already carved out, which are reportedly earmarked for ESPN and ABC, NBC and Peacock, and Prime Video.
But the newest tactic by WBD is to approach the league with the idea of pulling some NBA games away from the local broadcasting schedule and turning them into national contests that will air on TNT, and stream on its on-demand platform Max’s Bleacher/Report Sports Add-On. That’s something I speculated the league might be able to do back in April when WBD was still in an exclusive negotiating window with the NBA.
Some seasoned sports analysts are all for the idea, such as sports media consultant Jim Williams, who told Front Office Sports that he thinks it’s the ideal way out of this mess for both the NBA and TNT.
“It’s the perfect solution,” Williams said. “They have the inventory to do it and it’s yet another billion-dollar deal. I have no idea why they haven’t done it already. It makes all the sense in the world.”
The NBA’s current deal is shaping up to be worth as much as $7.6 billion per season as it is and could stretch over the course of the next 11 years. Nothing has been signed yet, but it’s believed to have deal frameworks in place with ESPN and Amazon and has a $2.5 billion+ per season offer on the table from Comcast as well.
What Other Options Does WBD Have for Keeping the NBA?
Observers can certainly be forgiven for growing weary of the drama surrounding the NBA’s rights negotiations. “Inside the NBA” host Charles Barkley vented his own frustrations on the “Beadle and Decker” radio show earlier this week, saying all he and his colleagues really wanted was some clarity.
“Like, hey man, just tell us something. Everybody’s got an article coming out every day about ‘we’ve still got a chance’ or ‘we’ve lost it,’” Barkley said. “I’m like, ‘Yo, man, you guys see us every week, how ’bout picking up the phone, saying, ‘Hey, we still negotiating’ or ‘you know what, we’ve lost it.’ Just truth us. Because the one thing that really sucks, we gotta do this next year no matter what.”
It seems that part of the reason that negotiations are taking so long is that WBD is turning over every rock to find a possible solution that will keep it from simply losing all of its NBA rights after next season. The company has the right to match any official third-party offers to the league, but that has been complicated by the fact that until some paperwork receives the proper signatures from Comcast and Amazon executives, there are no official third-party offers currently on the table.
Once those offers do become official, WBD could try to match NBC or Amazon’s bid. Recent reports indicate that the latter is more likely, as the ~$1.8 billion price tag for the Prime Video package appears more palatable to WBD’s number crunchers than the $2.5 billion-per-season cost to try and go after NBC and Peacock’s package.
There’s no denying the NBA’s value to WBD. Without NBA games, the company will have a much harder time trying to sell the channel to cable channel distributors like Xfinity, Charter, and DIRECTV at competitive rates. Cable and satellite companies aren’t enthusiastic about shelling out premium carriage fees for networks that lose marquee sports rights, especially as they continue to lose customers to cord-cutting.
The NBA, along with the NHL and Major League Baseball have grown increasingly frustrated with Diamond Sports Group, the company that owns the rights to a vast majority of those league’s local broadcasting rights. While it is still unclear if DSG will be able to emerge from bankruptcy proceedings in time for the new fall NBA season, it might be a smart move to pull back on some regional sports network (RSN) games in favor of TNT and Max anyway.
The drama of the 2024 NBA Finals between the Dallas Mavericks and the Boston Celtics has captured the attention of fans, for the moment. But behind the scenes, an even more dramatic battle is playing out, as WBD has made it clear it won’t lose the NBA without exploring every avenue for keeping it.
Max
Max is a subscription video streaming service that gives access to the full HBO library, along with exclusive Max Originals. There are hubs for content from TLC, HGTV, Food Network, Discovery, TCM, Cartoon Network, Travel Channel, ID, and more. Watch hit series like “The Last of Us,” “House of the Dragon,” “Succession,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and more. Thanks to the B/R Sports add-on, users can watch NBA, MLB, NHL, March Madness, and NASCAR events.