Zaslav: NBA Exit a ‘Great Decision’ As WBD Prioritizes Other Sports

Warner Bros. Discovery is continuing to reframe its relationship with the NBA, with CEO David Zaslav now saying it was a “great decision” to not retain live rights with the league.

Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, & Telecom Conference, Zaslav said not renewing live NBA game rights has allowed the TNT Sports parent to reconstruct its sports rights portfolio with other properties such as the French Open, NASCAR, and simulcasts of the College Football Playoff. Perhaps most importantly to WBD, that retooled set of rights now comes at a much lower aggregate cost to the company.

“Our job is to make sure we have enough quality sports so that we’re creating real value for the distributors. And it turns out not doing the NBA was a great decision for us,” Zaslav said. “We picked up the College Football Playoff, we picked up NASCAR in the summer, we have a great lineup globally, and we saved a huge amount of money.”

Zaslav’s comments at the conference amplified those he made last week with the release of WBD’s fourth-quarter earnings. There, he said, “We don’t need any more sports anywhere in the world to support our business.”

Indeed, WBD has been able to retain key distribution agreements and at better rates, in part through the strength of its non-sports content.

“We’re getting [subscription] fee increases across the board,” Zaslav said. 

The latest NBA comments, however, differ significantly from the prior position of Zaslav and WBD regarding the league. After the NBA elected last summer to strike deals instead with Amazon, NBCUniversal, and ESPN, WBD sued the league, alleging breach of contract. The legal matter quickly grew bitter, and was seemingly headed toward trial before a large-scale settlement was ultimately struck. 

That deal, also heavily involving ESPN, will see WBD retaining U.S. highlight rights for the NBA, and it will license out the famed Inside the NBA show to the Disney-owned network.

“A lot of the young generation don’t want to watch the whole game,” Zaslav said. “They want to go to one place. [Our highlights] are almost like a RedZone for basketball. So we think that’s a great growth engine.”

Measured on Sports

Zaslav, meanwhile, reiterated several other points from last week’s earnings report, namely that he views sports as often a lesser priority compared to other intellectual property that it can fully own and monetize over a long-term period. 

“Sports is a rental business. And so you, you’ve got to look and say, ‘Are we going to be able to make money on this?’ We’re money-good on virtually all of our sports,” Zaslav said. “We’re not going to pay more than we think we can afford or we can make money on. We’d rather invest. If we saved a huge amount of money by not doing the NBA [live rights], it’s more money that we could spend on the quality content that we can make global, that we think can strategically help us.”