TNT Sports’ Parent Moves to Keep NBA Rights Despite Financial Woes

TNT Sports parent company Warner Bros. Discovery is attempting to make good on its bid to retain NBA rights, and has made its first big move in exercising its matching rights.

The company on Monday, as expected, submitted a formal response to the NBA’s 11-year, $76 billion rights deals with Disney, NBC Sports, and Amazon, meeting a five-day deadline to respond to the league. WBD is targeting Amazon’s “C” package. That set of rights, estimated at $1.8 billion per year, includes a conference final every other season, early-round playoffs in line with what is currently on NBA TV, weekly regular-season broadcasts, the Emirates NBA Cup, and WNBA rights, among other assets.

“Regrettably, the league notified us of its intention to accept other offers for the games in our current rights package, leaving us to proceed under the matching rights provision, which is an integral part of our current rights agreement and the rights we have paid for under it,” WBD said Monday afternoon in a statement. “We have reviewed the offers and matched one of them.”

The league said in response that “we’ve received WBD’s proposal and are in the process of reviewing it.”

Bigger Questions

Despite WBD’s move, questions persist about whether the league is fully able to absorb the required costs. 

• Already saddled with $39 billion in debt and a sagging stock, WBD saw its shares on Monday fall another 1.4%, bringing its decline for the year to 27% and leaving its market capitalization at about $21 billion. Such a figure is a mere fraction of Amazon’s $1.91 trillion, Disney’s $173.5 billion, and Comcast’s $155.3 billion. 
• The Ringer’s Bill Simmons said on The Town podcast that Amazon has agreed to pay several years of its rights fees up front, a sum that could approach $6 billion. Industry sources, however, said that WBD has obtained letters of credit that would similarly enable the company to handle an escalated up-front rights payment. 

Deeper Bond?

WBD, meanwhile, is additionally seeking to leverage the unique nature of its NBA ties that go back four decades through its corporate predecessors. Over those years, league officials up to and including commissioner Adam Silver have frequently spoken of TNT Sports as much more than just a rights partner, and also, a deeply trusted ally of the league. 

That level of trust has manifested itself in multiple ways, including Inside the NBA (above) becoming one of the top studio shows in sports television history and standing out with its candidness, and TNT Sports and the league operating NBA.com and NBA TV since 2008 through a joint venture. 

But many of the key TNT Sports figures who have been instrumental in forging that bond—including former Turner Sports president Harvey Schiller, former Turner president David Levy, former WBD Sports president Lenny Daniels, and former WBD Sports senior vice president Tara August, among others—are no longer with the company, leaving a different set of personal relationships with the league.