Hollywood had one of the biggest shakeups in its history on Friday, when Netflix announced it would purchase Warner Bros. Discovery for a whopping $82.7 billion.
The announcement is simply the first step of what will ultimately be a long process to gain regulatory approval and fend off any would-be bidders that could take an offer directly to WBD’s shareholders. But we now know the go-forward plan for WBD. The company will continue its planned split, which is now expected to complete in Q3 of 2026, separating its film studios and streaming asset from its legacy cable networks.
A new entity, Discovery Global, will control the cable assets, which include TNT, TBS, CNN, and others. For sports fans, that means the TNT Sports properties — March Madness, the College Football Playoff, postseason MLB and NHL, the French Open, and more — will be operating completely independent of any media megacorp, at least initially.
To survive as an independent entity, TNT Sports will need to make some savvy business moves both in the United States and abroad, where its Eurosport brand holds valuable live sports rights across the continent, to combat the secular decline of pay TV.
The first step will be to launch a streaming service, which future Discovery Global CEO Gunnar Wiedenfels already announced during a WBD investor call earlier this year. Wiedenfels said at the time that he doesn’t see a need to sublicense the company’s sports content to other streamers.
It’ll be interesting to see if that strategy holds for the long-term, and the company goes forward with a standalone streamer. The move would be a big bet on the quality of its sports portfolio being able to drive subscriptions from consumers outside of the pay TV bundle. Likely, Discovery Global will utilize platforms like Prime Video Channels and YouTube Primetime Channels to help with the uptake of the service. But in doing so, Discovery Global will be forking over a fair amount of revenue to those companies.
Sometime down the line, and probably sooner rather than later for reasons to be explained below, Discovery Global will either find a buyer for TNT Sports, or the division will simply fold. It is not realistic for the company to survive without the backing of a large corporation.
The biggest hurdle for TNT Sports will be retaining meaningful sports rights past 2028. As it stands, the company’s deals with MLB, NHL, and its sublicense of College Football Playoff games from ESPN, all expire that year. With the exception of March Madness, which expires in 2032, those three deals are the lifeblood of TNT Sports’ current portfolio in the U.S. Without those deals, there will be no way for TNT to retain the same fees it currently receives from pay TV distributors, which will make up the vast majority of its revenue after the WBD split.
Should TNT Sports remain independently owned by Discovery Global when it comes time to renew those deals, it’d be tough to imagine any one of those leagues wanting to stay in business with a sub-scale media company holding assets in terminal decline without strong corporate backing.
TNT Sports’ best chance at survival (whatever that even looks like for a legacy brand in today’s media environment), is to find an interested buyer. We already know Comcast’s planned cable spinoff, Versant, isn’t interested in acquiring any additional cable networks, so they’re off the table. But who else is out there?
Well, the most obvious candidate would be Paramount, the only company that was interested in acquiring the whole of Warner Bros. Discovery, including TNT Sports, in the first place. A combination of TNT Sports and CBS Sports would create a formidable portfolio of live sports that could rival that of ESPN. Paramount’s new ownership has certainly shown an affinity for live sports, aggressively bidding and winning rights for UFC earlier this year.
Perhaps Fox, with its newfound ownership stability, is interested in bolstering its live sports portfolio. Out of all the legacy media companies out there, Fox is still the one most committed to the pay TV bundle, so maybe it’d have less of an aversion for adding cable channels (at least, at the right price). Fox has been clear in its desire to get a piece of the College Football Playoff, which TNT Sports could provide. And a deal would consolidate most of the MLB postseason under one umbrella. However, this still feels very much like a longshot. The rest of TNT Sports’ portfolio — NHL, French Open, March Madness, etc. — doesn’t feel like as sensible a fit as a Paramount deal. And why would Fox willingly take on declining assets?
Outside of these possibilities, there doesn’t seem to be much there. No streamer or tech company is willingly going to purchase cable networks. Comcast just spun off its own cable assets. Disney doesn’t need the TNT Sports portfolio for ESPN.
The most likely scenario is also the most obvious. TNT Sports looks destined to fold. When exactly that would be is anyone’s guess. But most buyers in the market for live sports rights are better off simply waiting for TNT Sports’ properties to come up for bid in a couple of years. If Netflix or Amazon or Paramount or Apple want to make a run for MLB or NHL rights, why not just wait? Each and every company competing with Discovery Global will have much deeper pockets, especially when considering that Discovery Global will be saddled with much of the debt currently held by Warner Bros. Discovery after the spinoff.
And once those sports rights begin to expire, TNT Sports will increasingly look like a sinking ship. When the network lost its NBA package last year, the writing was on the wall. Now that Netflix won the bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery, solidifying the sports division’s exile, its future has become even more apparent.
Absent a rescue from Paramount, or a dramatic turnaround of the pay TV business, TNT Sports’ future seems all but certain.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.