Would Merged Paramount/Warner Bros. Discovery Rival ESPN in Marquee Sports Rights?

So much for a quiet pre-holiday news week! The relative calm in the streaming industry was shattered on Wednesday evening when news broke that Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery had begun talks about a potential merger. Though discussions are still in the early stages, a combination of the two companies is worth examining in greater detail, particularly as both hold a potent variety of live sports rights.

• Paramount has NFL and college sports, while WBD carries games from MLB, the NBA and NHL.
• Both companies have embraced streaming, and offer most live sports on streaming as well as linear platforms.
• Combining Max and Paramount+ would create a sports streaming platform that could rival even ESPN’s wide array of sports events.

Which Sports Rights Would Merged Paramount/WBD Own?

Combining WBD and Paramount would instantly create one of the top sports broadcasters in the world. The company would own the rights to all sports on CBS, including a weekly slate of Sunday NFL games, college football and basketball, PGA Tour golf, and more, as well as games from the MLB, NBA, and NHL and NASCAR races which broadcast on TBS, TNT or truTV.

The new company would hold all the rights to the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, which Paramount and WBD currently share. The full tournament will be available to stream for the first time in 2024, as Max’s new Bleacher Report Sports Add-On shows all live sports games appearing on WBD-owned channels, while the ad-free Paramount+ with Showtime tier will livestream all games appearing on CBS.

Talks of a merger should erase fears that NFL rights payments might bankrupt Paramount, and following through on the combination would ensure that the NFL remains on CBS until the conclusion of its current broadcast deal in 2033. There’s no way that WBD would let an asset like CBS’s NFL package get away, no matter how deliberate the company’s spending on live sports has been since CEO David Zaslav took over in spring 2022.

Is ESPN in Trouble?

ESPN is still the worldwide leader in sports, and its plan to launch a streaming version of its channels that won’t require a cable subscription by 2025 is unlikely to be derailed by the Paramount/WBD merger talks. However, there’s no denying that an integration of those two companies would be a real threat to ESPN’s supremacy as a sports broadcaster.

To start with, Paramount/WBD would have a much bigger selection of NFL games than ESPN, which only holds the rights to “Monday Night Football,” and thus has a maximum of two games per week in the NFL regular season, plus one or two ESPN+-exclusive games per season. ESPN and WBD have similar NBA packages; ESPN gets 100 games this regular season, while TNT will air 65, and both are reportedly looking to reduce the number of games in the league’s next broadcast deal.

For now, ESPN has the advantage in NHL broadcasts. The linear packages of the two outlets are similar to their NBA counterparts; ESPN has 100 exclusive games spread across that channel, ESPN+, Hulu, and ABC in 2023, while TNT has 62 regular season games on the slate. But ESPN+ also holds the rights to out-of-market NHL games, and streams thousands of them every season.

It will be fascinating to see what the two sides do with their MLB rights going forward. TBS aired 26 Tuesday night MLB contests in the 2023 season, while ESPN got 25 Sunday Night Baseball contests. But ESPN has an opt-out clause in its MLB contract that it can trigger in 2025, and it may decide the $550 million it spends annually on MLB rights could be better used elsewhere.

WBD doesn’t hold any college sports rights outside of Men’s March Madness, but Paramount has a wide variety of contests, including football and basketball. ESPN broadcasts games from nearly every conference, but its marquee college sports events are the College Football Playoff and NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament.

In soccer, a combined Paramount/WBD would hold a clear advantage over ESPN. The new company would hold the rights to games from the U.S. Men’s and Women’s National Teams, UEFA Champions League, CONCACAF, NWSL, Serie A, Campeonato Brasileirão Série A, and more. ESPN does hold the rights to some major European soccer leagues like the Bundesliga, Spain’s La Liga, and the English Football League, as well as a package of NWSL games. Still, Paramount/WBD’s inventory of soccer games would be much larger than ESPN’s, and more prestigious to boot.

To sum it up, ESPN shouldn’t mothball its plans to launch a streaming platform thanks to Paramount-WBD merger talks. But such a combination would create a new sports streaming rival for ESPN that carries contests from all the major sports leagues in the United States and more. ESPN may not be done adding live sports rights before it launches a streaming service in 2025, but as things currently stand, it has reason to sweat about a possible union of Paramount and WBD.