What Does Bleacher Report Tier on Max Mean for Fubo Users Who Want TNT, TBS?

The process of adding live sports to Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming service Max has been a slow and purposeful rollout. There have been lots of teases and hints from WBD officials, but it wasn’t until Tuesday that the company finally revealed its plans for making sporting events from the NBA, NHL, MLB and much more available on the streamer.

Max will officially add the Bleacher Report Sports add-on on Oct. 5, just in time for the start of postseason baseball coverage on the Turner Networks TNT and TBS. Every sporting event airing on those channels (as well as truTV) this fall and winter will be offered via the B/R Sports add-on at no extra charge. Max won’t begin asking customers to pay for more live sports until February.

Sadly for Fubo customers, this big upgrade for Max may mean the Turner Networks won’t be brought back to the live TV streaming service any time soon. Fubo has been without TBS and TNT since 2020, when it added ESPN to its channel lineup instead.

At the time, TBS and TNT were owned by AT&T. But the 2022 merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery brought the channels under new ownership, and Fubo CEO David Gandler said in February that his company would welcome the channels back with open arms under the right circumstances.

“We would love to carry Turner. Obviously, that would have to be accomplished at a level that we feel makes sense given our subscriber-related expense line,” the CEO said. “We’re open to doing deals, we’re open to optimizing our bundle cost to bring the best content portfolio and product that we can to our customer base. So, hopefully, that conversation will take place at some point.”

But that was then, and this is now. WBD making every game from its linear channels available on its streaming platform is likely not winning the company many friends in the pay-TV industry. From the point of view of a live TV streamer like Fubo, WBD is weakening the value of the Turner Networks by removing exclusivity as a factor for its content. Why would Fubo pay the expense of carrying the channels if users could just subscribe to Max to get the same sporting events?

This was one of the main issues that led to a carriage dispute between Spectrum and Disney this summer. Spectrum said that Disney had similarly watered down its cable channels by housing so much of its premium content on Disney+. The dispute only ended because Disney agreed to provide Spectrum TV users with no-cost login credentials to ad-supported Disney+.

Charter’s CFO declared the deal a win-win for both companies in the aftermath, and suggested that more partnerships between streamers and pay-TV providers could be on the horizon. Might Fubo reach out to WBD about offering a Max subscription bundled with a Fubo account? It certainly could, but WBD CEO David Zaslav would have to be convinced of the value of that proposition.

It’s likely that the addition of live sports to Max will have ripple effects that keep Fubo from bringing back the Turner Networks any time soon. If Fubo and Max don’t work out a mutually beneficial bundling arrangement for their services, at least Fubo users will be able to stream sports on Max for free until February!