While TNT Sports has been televising the NCAA Tournament in partnership with CBS since 2011, its college sports content outside of that has been quite limited. But that’s starting to change in several notable ways. TNT Sports chairman and CEO Luis Silberwasser recently spoke about the importance of growing the college sector for its overall brand.
The last year has proven a monumental one for TNT Sports. Overall, they’ve signed deals for everything from NASCAR to tennis’ French Open to the FIFA Club World Cup to Unrivaled. They’ve also launched a regular sports block on truTV (again the home of the First Four this year). And while they’ve lost the NBA going forward, they’ve shown strong interest in continuing a sports presence elsewhere.
In college sports in particular, TNT Sports has already landed deals for Mountain West football, College Football Playoff games (sublicensed from ESPN), NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments such as the Acrisure Classic and the Players Era Festival, and (beginning next year) Big East and Big 12 basketball conference games. They’ve also been mentioned as a potential landing spot for other rights, although there may be some discrepancy between comments from Silberwasser and WBD CEO David Zaslav.
In any case, on a recent media call, Silberwasser maintained that his division has a lot of room to grow in college sports. He told Awful Announcing there that TNT Sports’ current college portfolio is just the beginning.
“We’re just getting started. When we talk about the new portfolio at TNT Sports, I talk about two ideas. One is the breadth, meaning getting more sports and new sports, whether it’s motorsports with NASCAR or tennis with Roland Garros. But we’ve also made the conscious decision to add depth to our portfolio, and particularly in the area of college. We’ve started with some of the tournaments out a little bit outside of the conferences like Acrisure, Players Era.
“But this year is going to be the first year with Big East, with Big 12. And I think that signals our interest in having college be a much more prominent part of our portfolio. We’re just getting started on this, but we’re excited about the potential, both on the basketball side of college, but also the football side as well. And we love the conferences that we have. So it’s going to be an interesting road for us, and something that we’re excited about.”
Silberwasser emphasized the importance of the men’s NCAA Tournament overall, which fits with his comments about expanding that tournament on this call and elsewhere. He said it stands out from those other rights.
“This March Madness tournament is a cornerstone of TNT Sports’ growing media rights in the college area. As you guys know, we brought on the college football playoffs, Big East, Big 12, Players Era Festival. But the tournament remains the cornerstone.”
“We’re lucky to be able to be in sports and participate in many tournaments and watch many sports tournaments. But I don’t think there’s any as special and as unique as the March Madness tournament.”
An interesting part of that is discussions of the declining cable (or satellite, or multichannel video programming distributor) bundle overall. TNT Sports’ channels are still predominantly consumed through those various MVPD bundles. But Silberwasser emphasized the many other ways fans can watch March Madness programming, from MVPD-authenticated streaming through March Madness Live to over-the-top streaming with their direct-to-consumer Max service.
“We’re going to have it everywhere in each of our platforms, whether it’s TBS, CBS, truTV in terms of linear. In streaming, we’ll have March Madness Live, TBS, TNT, and truTV games will be on Max as well, and the CBS games will be on Paramount Plus. So people will have, fans will have every ability to watch the games wherever they want. And we’ll have around-the-clock content across NCAA.com, Bleacher Report, House of Highlights, CBS Sports and more.”
While the NCAA Tournament may be their most critical college basketball rights, Silberwasser said it’s vital for TNT Sports to establish itself as a season-long destination in the sport. He said this fall’s incoming conference play rights will particularly help there.
“Part of this is the drum beat, and being able to be part of the college basketball ecosystem before we get to March Madness. And if you look at our calendar before, we had March Madness, but we really were not playing in that field before that. So this allows us, whether it’s through a conference or through some of these tournaments that we’re excited about and that we think have good potential, to be able to have that drum beat early on in the season and as we get to March Madness.”
But, as for the tournament itself, Silberwasser said it stands out for the storytelling CBS and they can execute around it.
“I think what makes the NCAA Tournament so unique is that it gives us so many opportunities, 68 opportunities to tell great stories with each of the teams in the tournament, from basketball powerhouses to potential Cinderellas. And we have a truly unique relationship that elevates these stories every year. And we are in many ways always serving the fan, and we try to do that, and we are agnostic about where are they going to watch the tournament. We want to make sure that it’s easy to watch everywhere.
