Could Warner Brothers Discovery Swoop Back Into the NFL TV Business?

David Zaslav could go from cartoon villain to genius with the stroke of a fountain pen.

The possible merger of Zaslav’s Warner Bros. Discovery with Shari Redstone’s Paramount Global could catapult WBD Sports into the NFL TV business for the first time in 26 years.

Turner Sports previously held broadcast rights to the NFL between 1990 and 1997, with TNT splitting up the Sunday Night Football package with ESPN. The network’s former NFL announcing team included Verne Lundquist and Skip Caray as play-by-play announcers, Pat Haden and Mark May as game analysts, and Bryan Burwell and Craig Sager as sideline reporters.

CBS Sports and WBD Sports’ TBS, TNT, and TruTV already share TV rights for the annual March Madness men’s college basketball tournament.

As part of the imagined merger, according to Axios and The Wall Street Journal, CBS Sports, which is owned by Paramount, could be combined with WBD Sports, encompassing the old Turner Sports’ TNT and TBS networks. That would instantly put WBD back into business with the NFL, the country’s most powerful and successful sports league.

My sources tell me that WBD has been trying to get back into the NFL media rotation for years. David Levy, the former head of Turner Sports, spearheaded those efforts.

If the deal goes through, the ramifications could be profound. Zaslav’s TNT is about to enter make-or-break negotiations to retain broadcast rights to the NBA. Zaslav sent shock waves through the sports media industry in November 2022 by telling Wall Street he doesn’t “have to have the NBA.” Would Zaslav walk away from expensive NBA negotiations if he gets the NFL? Maybe. That would provide a huge opening for Amazon Prime Video to try to create an NBA version of Thursday Night Football.

You can’t blame WBD for wanting to be in business with the NFL. There’s a section of TV purgatory for networks that have had and lost NFL media rights. CBS wandered in the wilderness for years after losing the NFC package to a startup, Fox Sports, in 1993. CBS only recovered when it aggressively snatched the AFC package, in 1998.

The same thing happened to NBC Sports. The network behind Seinfeld and Friends’ thought it would survive losing the AFC to CBS in 1997. Wrong. NBC struggled for a decade before landing Sunday Night Football rights in 2006.

Another factor: CBS has locked up NFL rights for the next decade. For $2 billion per year, the Tiffany network has the AFC package through 2033. On Feb. 11, CBS will broadcast Super Bowl LVIII from Las Vegas. It also gets the Super Bowl in 2028 and 2032. 

The talks are early. Still, the allure of the NFL may make this too good of an opportunity for Zaslav to pass up.