Thursday was the non-binding deadline for interested companies to submit their bids for Warner Bros. Discovery. And as expected, three suitors made their formal offers.
Netflix, Comcast, and Paramount have all submitted bids to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, according to a report in The New York Times on Thursday evening. Paramount remains the only company interested in buying the whole of Warner Bros. Discovery, while Netflix and Comcast submitted bids for just the streaming and studios assets, per the report.
The future of TNT Sports will be determined by which buyer (if any) the Warner Bros. Discovery board ultimately settles on.
Should the company accept an offer from Paramount, TNT Sports would presumably combine with CBS Sports, creating a sports division with numerous valuable tier one sports rights. In this scenario, Paramount would hold an NFL package, the entirety of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, the College Football Playoff games sublicensed to TNT, every UFC card, regular season college football and basketball, golf rights including the Masters and half of the PGA Tour schedule, significant postseason MLB and NHL games, a package of NASCAR races, the French Open, and more. The company would instantly become one of the biggest players in live sports alongside ESPN.
The future of TNT Sports would look much different should Warner Bros. Discovery opt to accept either Comcast’s or Netflix’s bid, or decide to decline all of the offers and continue with its planned split next April. In any of those scenarios, there is no clear landing spot for TNT Sports from an M&A perspective, and the sports division would operate under Discovery Global, the planned split-off entity housing Warner Bros. Discovery’s declining assets.
Any deal would need to pass muster with federal regulators due to the size of the transaction.
Warner Bros. Discovery has self-imposed a Christmas deadline to determine whether it will accept an offer from one of its three suitors, or continue with its planned spinoff.
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.