Sports might be a sore subject for Warner Bros. Discovery right now.

The company reported $11.01 billion in fourth-quarter revenue, falling short of analysts’ estimates of $11.36 billion. 

The company’s TV networks segment, which includes Discovery, TNT, TBS, CNN, TLC, and Eurosport, fell 6% to around $5.5 billion, partially attributed to major sporting events taking place on other networks — including the men’s World Cup, NFL, and college football.

Advertising revenue fell 14%.

Warner Bros. Discovery posted a loss of $2.1 billion for the three months ending Dec. 31 and ended with $49.5 billion in gross debt. 

In November, Warner Bros. Discovery Sports cut more than 10% of its workforce, affecting around 700 employees across Turner Sports, Bleacher Report, and the company’s studio operations. 

An NBA Block

During the quarter — and a month after Turner Sports’ TNT extended contracts of all four members of TNT’s “Inside the NBA” — Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said the company will take a “disciplined” approach to NBA media negotiations, adding: “We don’t have to have the NBA.”

TNT currently has a deal with the league that runs through the 2024-25 season. Combined with ESPN, the deals total $24 billion. 

Earlier this month, the NBA All-Star Game had its worst-ever viewership, with an average of 4.6 million viewers across TNT and TBS — a 27% year-over-year decline and a 22% drop from the previous low of 5.9 million in 2021.

Saudi Arabia has until Tuesday to file an amicus brief in federal court that lays out the sovereign immunity arguments as to why the country’s Public Investment Fund and its governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan do not have to comply with the PGA Tour’s subpoenas. 

Judge Beth Labson Freeman set the deadline in a Friday hearing in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

Freeman didn’t alter the January 2024 trial date in the civil antitrust case between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour. The next hearing is set for April 7, where — depending on how the discovery pleadings go over the next few weeks — Freeman could have no choice but to push a trial back.

A lawyer representing the Saudi government filed a three-page letter on Thursday requesting the amicus brief, a filing from somebody not part of a case to voice support for one side that is more typical in arguments before the Supreme Court. 

The letter arrived in the court docket a week after Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen ruled that PIF and Al-Rumayyan were subject to the PGA Tour’s discovery requests that include depositions of PIF officials. In her ruling, van Keulen wrote PIF’s “conduct in founding, funding, overseeing, and operating” LIV Golf falls outside a sovereign entity’s commercial activity exception. 

Van Keulen noted in her decision that lawyers representing PIF “have not presented evidence that Saudi Arabia has expressed an interest in the outcome of the current disputes.” 

“All of a sudden, we get a letter because they read [van Keulen’s] order and said, ‘Whoops. We forgot to tell you if this really matters to us,’” Freeman said during the hearing. “It falls a little bit on deaf ears.”

The “dumb money era” is over for podcasting companies like Tom Brady and Michael Strahan’s Religion of Sports, according to the New York Times.

Battered by the twin threats of an economic recession and a weakening ad market, once high-flying podcasting startups are increasingly laying off staffers.

Founded by Brady, Strahan, and Gotham Chopra in 2018, Religion of Sports came out of the gate fast with six new shows. But the company recently did an about-face, laying off podcast employees and shuttering its audio division.

The celebrity-based media startup is not alone. 

Spotify reduced its podcast staff in January for the third time in five months. Chief content officer Dawn Ostroff has resigned.

“The dumb money era is over,” podcast strategist Eric Nuzum told the New York Times. “People had been throwing money at things just to see if they could get in and scale up audience quickly, but now everyone’s being a little bit more conservative.”

But don’t cry for Brady, the seven-time Super Bowl champion who recently announced his retirement from the NFL.

This week, SiriusXM announced a multiyear extension of Brady’s “Let’s Go” podcast with Jim Gray and former All-Pro receiver Larry Fitzgerald. 

In 2024, Brady will step in as Fox Sports’ No. 1 game analyst as part of a 10-year, $375 million deal.