Back in November 2022, Warner Bros. Discovery president and CEO David Zaslav said “We don’t have to have the NBA.” That was largely seen as a negotiating ploy at that time, and Zaslav himself offered a different perspective that they’d “hopefully” have NBA rights “long-term” five months later.
But now, the seemingly once remote chances that WBD’s TNT Sports could be left on the outside of NBA rights deals looking in seem to be rising. So what would that mean for the company’s U.S. sports branch overall?
TNT Sports does have significant rights beyond the NBA. They have MLB rights (up to one league championship series each year) through 2028, and they have the men’s college basketball NCAA Tournament (with CBS) through 2032. They also have NHL rights (with ESPN) through the 2027-28 season. And they have several other sports properties, including some NASCAR races, U.S. soccer, cycling, MotoGP, Bellator, and more. They also currently have All Elite Wrestling, but there’s some future uncertainty there.
Even with all that, though, the NBA is by far the biggest rights deal the company has. And it’s a key part of their sports identity. Part of that isn’t just about the games, but about the award-winning studio show Inside The NBA. They’ve cited that show as an inspiration for what they do in studio shows for MLB and the NHL, and they’ve incorporated it into other properties such as The Match. The show has also been praised by many studio shows on other networks. That’s a big part of why TNT Sports locked the cast (host Ernie Johnson and analysts Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith, and Shaquille O’Neal) up long-term in October 2022, even with uncertainty about whether they’d still have NBA rights after 2024-25.
But with discussions of TNT Sports losing some or all of its NBA rights, there’s also now talk that Inside The NBA might be shared with another broadcaster. That also could see some or all of its personalities leave for other pastures completely. While WBD has been tied to the NBA on NBA Digital, League Pass, and NBA TV, all of that could go away also if the league’s next batch of rights don’t include TNT.
With all that, those November 2022 comments from Zaslav are being revisited. Those included “Sports is hard,” “We don’t have to have the NBA,” “It has to be a deal for the future, it can’t be a deal for the past,” and even “You could put the NBA on HBO Max” (not as an addition, which they’ve since done, but as a primary move). Yes, Zaslav walked some of that back five months later with hopes to have the NBA “long-term,” but the seed of an NBA-less WBD was planted at that point. It now looks more likely to sprout, so it’s worth some detailed examination.
Does TNT Sports work without the NBA? Probably, but it would be very different. The NBA in particular is a big part of what’s helped TNT keep decent per-subscriber fees and distribution even in an era of declining multichannel video provider subscriptions (or “cord-cutting”), with MLB playing a similar (but lesser) role for TBS, the NHL providing a bump for TNT, and the NCAA Tournament helping both. Pulling the NBA piece out of that Jenga tower doesn’t necessarily cause an instant collapse, but it does raise questions about the structural integrity of the rest of the construction.
The streaming side is also worth discussing here. While it’s taken TNT Sports a while to get involved on that side, they are now. That includes both their B/R Sports add-on for Max and their plans to join ESPN and Fox in the “Spulu” joint venture. That’s helping them through currently declining linear numbers and may also help set them up for future survival in a time when those linear numbers keep getting lower. But the interest in their streaming offerings is likely to be much lower if they can’t offer the NBA.
If we simply pull the NBA piece out of TNT Sports, the remaining segments are still valuable. And there are many things a company with WBD’s scale can do for linear and streaming programming even without a specific league. But a lot of the company’s current branding efforts and also actual value are heavily linked to the NBA. So there are good questions about what might be ahead for them in a non-NBA world.
One thing to contemplate there is the potential for further acquisitive growth. WBD was built out of a giant merger between Warner Bros. and Discovery, and there was previously some talk about them trying to pick up CBS parent Paramount Global (which is facing massive future uncertainty right now). That may or may not happen, with at least two other suitors seemingly ahead in line, but the idea of WBD buying something else isn’t completely out there. And if they were able to build in other sports offerings from a prominent company like CBS, that would certainly help them survive the loss of the NBA.
The key takeaway here is that, yes, Zaslav’s “We don’t have to have the NBA” works on some levels. The entire WBD company is not going to take a Wile E. Coyote leap into midair if they no longer have the NBA. (They did perform a Wile-esque self-own by choosing not to release the latest movie there, but that’s a different story.) However, those comments perhaps underplayed how foundational the NBA is to WBD. The company will survive without it, but if that comes to pass, it will look far different afterward.
