TNT Sports (and predecessors Warner Bros. Discovery Sports and Turner Sports) has long been involved with college basketball, particularly with their since-2011 deal in partnership with CBS Sports for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. That deal runs through 2032, so they’ll be in the college basketball landscape for some time to come. And this year has seen them make major moves to bump up their men’s college basketball coverage beyond just that tournament, and to bring in significant women’s college basketball coverage as well. Both of those moves are on particular display this Thanksgiving Week.
This week, TNT Sports exclusively broadcasts more than 30 men’s and women’s college basketball games across their various platforms. That’s with the Players Era Festival (men’s basketball) from Las Vegas, the Acrisure Classic (women’s basketball) and the Acrisure Holiday Classic (men’s basketball) from Palm Springs. Coverage begins at 1:30 p.m. Eastern Tuesday with pregame shows ahead of games on TBS (Players Era Festival) and truTV (Acrisure Classic), with both available on Max as well; the full week’s broadcast lineup can be found here.
Earlier this month, TNT Sports executive vice president and chief content officer Craig Barry spoke to AA about this week’s schedule and how it fits into the company’s wider college sports and college basketball plans. Barry said college basketball stands out as a potential growth opportunity, especially around these early-season tournaments and the less-common matchups they provide.
“We just think there’s a real untapped opportunity around college basketball, especially with the tournament format.”
Barry said another part of TNT Sports’ desire to get more into college basketball beyond just March Madness is the sport’s depth, as shown by recent runs in the NCAA tournaments by some less-on-the-radar teams.
“College basketball, men’s and women’s, is kind of at a crossroads,” he said. “You’re not just dealing with the top 25.”
That’s contributed to the company’s desire to do season-long coverage. And it’s not just tournaments; this June, TNT Sports announced a six-year deal with the Big East for 65-plus men’s and women’s college basketball games each season. Last week (after Barry’s conversation with AA), they acquired (beginning in 2025) the former ESPN+ package of Big 12 football and men’s basketball games as part of a settlement of their lawsuit against the NBA (with that agreement also including ESPN licensing Inside The NBA for Disney platforms).
Barry said on the men’s side, increased early-season tournament and regular-season coverage will help them track stories throughout the season. He said that it will be important to build towards the NCAA Tournament, hopefully in a way that can also prime viewers for some of what might happen there.
“We have such a short period of time with the three weeks of March Madness. Most of those stories are predetermined. We have this idea of stretching the editorial, having it game-to-game, to kind of carry the audience along with us. I think that’s really valuable to us.”
Barry added that the regular-season content will be crucial to tying the tournaments together.
“It’s interesting with us having the last tournament of the season as well as a bunch of the first tournaments of the season, but we didn’t have the connective tissue until we got the Big East. Now we have a narrative and a vehicle from the beginning of the season to the end of the season.”
On the storytelling side, Barry said a key focus there is going to be on players.
“One of the ways that we can create a better connection with the fan is through the individual player. College sports for the most part has been about the name on the front of the jersey, not the name on the back. We feel just with the way that we approach our coverage that there’s an opportunity to get to know these kids and to have a more consistent offering throughout the season, as we start to tell the stories of these kids, and their talent, and their skill level, and where they came from.”
He said college basketball’s fascinating in that standpoint, with it providing huge spotlights both for those who will go on to pro basketball and those who will do other things.
“You’re dealing with kids, and there’s so much on the line for these kids, whether it’s their college careers or what they’re going to do after. Some of them will never play basketball again after their college career, some of them will go to the NBA. Some of them will leave early, some will stay for four years. And they’re on, potentially, some of the biggest stages in all of basketball. They’re playing in front of huge crowds, live crowds, televised crowds.”
Barry said there’s also a lot of emotion that comes through in these games, making them an appealing product to televise.
“And there’s something about college sports, where the reason that everybody is involved in college sports from a fan standpoint and even an athletics standpoint, conferences and schools aside, is that it’s about that love of the game, the passion, the drive of the individual. That comes out in college sports. There is just so much emotional connection from the players, but also from the fans and the alumni.
Barry said that can make college sports resonate in a different way than pro sports do.
“I think pro sports is just different. Pro sports, these guys are paid to do a job, they don’t kind of have the affinity to the team, the city, whereas college sports, the connection’s just a little bit deeper, it’s a little bit more authentic. And the stories of the kids, to be honest, they’re kind of taken for granted sometimes. But the lives of these kids who are looking to make it as basketball players, even if it is just at the collegiate level, the pressure of that is incredible.
“I don’t think one sport is better than the other, that college basketball is better than pro. I just think there’s a certain authentic passion with college sports. And I don’t want to say people aren’t passionate about professional sports, but it’s just different, it’s a different emotional connection.”
TNT Sports’ expansion of their college basketball coverage is related to some larger shifts there over the past several years, including current deals for the NHL, Mountain West football, College Football Playoff games (licensed from ESPN), U.S. Soccer, Bellator, the Savannah Bananas, and more. They also have upcoming deals with Unrivaled, NASCAR, and tennis’ French Open, amongst other properties.
A key component to many of those deals is truTV. That network is adopting a nightly (and beyond) sports focus featuring plenty of alternate broadcasts, simulcasts, and other studio programming as well as exclusive games. And Barry said it gives them some different opportunities than TBS and TNT.
“We’re converting tru to a primetime sports destination. That means we’re looking at various sports properties and adjacent sports content. And what’s important about tru is it’s still kind of an entertainment network, and there’s this intersection of sports and culture that we’re trying to cultivate. And so you might see live exclusive games, but also live studio shows, you might see sports movies, you might see kind of sports-adjacent studio shows, highlight-based type shows.
“It’s to try and just extend the experience for people that are interested in college hoops, or just generally interested in sports, a channel of kind of sports discovery where you can go there and there’s a bunch of different kinds of sports or sports content. And so far, it’s been going really well. We’ve had the opportunity to try a bunch of different things, throw some stuff up against the wall and see what sticks.”
Importantly, truTV also gives TNT Sports more linear slots for sports content, which is a notable part of several of these rights agreements. Barry said a challenge they’ve sometimes faced with TNT and TBS is the limitations on how much time they can have for sports given those networks’ entertainment programming elsewhere.
“Ultimately, we want all of our networks to have a certain amount of value to the fan and consumer,” he said. “Over the years, TBS and TNT have always been very successful entertainment networks, so real estate is limited on entertainment networks. tru created a platform where we could have a little more leniency with real estate.”
And Barry said that extends beyond just games and is part of the thinking with the new nightly primetime sports block on that channel.
“The opportunity there is not only to put games there, but we can also put adjacent sports content there without displacing entertainment programming. Now we can create a more specific sports destination. TNT and TBS might be a sports destination on a certain day, an NBA destination on one day, a hockey destination on another. But Monday through Friday after 7, tru is a sports destination. So if you’re a fan of sports content, sports entertainment you can go there and it will provide you with a certain degree of engagement.”
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“College hoops on tru is something, starting with the First Four, that has always resonated. So we saw that as an opportunity for sure.”
He said TNT Sports’ parent Warner Bros. Discovery’s overall scale, and variety of platforms, is another key to picking up more and more rights.
“We can have quality basketball games that we can distribute on multiple platforms, to TBS, truTV, and Max. There’s plenty of games. And not only can we simulcast, but we can do exclusive games on the various platforms as well. And there’s plenty of scale to be able to do that. So it works really well from a content distribution strategy as well.”
The streaming component with Max is notable, too. Barry said that provides them with even more of the aforementioned real estate for different kinds of sports broadcasts, but also lets TNT Sports reach fans who don’t have cable.
“First and foremost for the people who don’t have cable, it becomes a catch-all,” he said. “It becomes a destination. And then in addition to that, we’re able to create adjacent experiences, whether that’s an altcast or a betcast or a datacast, just different ways that people can experience the games or engage with the games. We’re able to do that because of the platforms that we have. We don’t have a channel limitation [with Max]; we can do a thing if we want, if we feel like it’s something that a fan could potentially be interested in.”
Barry said their larger approach is trying to provide sports coverage to as wide of an audience as possible rather than focusing on particular platform exclusives.
“I think the most important thing is that we look for sports that we think are compelling and matchups that we think are compelling for the fan. And I think for us, it’s a little bit less about forcing the fan to go to a specific platform. We’d rather put it everywhere, and whatever platform you have access to is where you can watch it, be it TNT or truTV or Max.”
