The companies interested in buying all or part of TNT Sports parent company Warner Bros. Discovery are going to be working through the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
Less than a week after receiving initial, non-biding bids from CBS Sports parent company Paramount, Netflix, and NBC Sports parent company Comcast, WBD is now looking for more. It has detailed to the trio of bidders that it is looking for elevated, second-round offers, according to industry sources and multiple reports.
WBD has also placed a Monday deadline to submit those enhanced bids, which is set to create a scramble over the holiday among those suitors to prepare themselves for this next round.
Paramount, which just completed its $8 billion merger with Skydance Media this past summer, is seeking all of WBD, while Netflix and Comcast are more interested in WBD’s film and television studios and the HBO Max streaming service.
The heightened push from WBD further signals its intent to complete the high-stakes deliberation by year’s end, if not sooner. Those purchase offers are also competing with parallel consideration by WBD to separate itself next year into two independent, publicly traded companies. That effort would involve most of the WBD sports assets going to a newly created Discovery Global, and with a sports-focused streaming service now in development.
It’s possible that the sweetened bids could lead WBD to enter exclusive talks with one of the companies.
