Warner Bros. Discovery to lose $1.1 billion in advertising without NBA

The jury is still out on whether Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) will be better off with or without the NBA starting next season, but there’s no question the TNT Sports parent company will be hurting in the advertising department.

According to a report by Brian Steinberg of Variety, citing media analyst Robert Fishman of MoffettNathanson, WBD is projected to lose $1.1 billion in television advertising in 2026. That figure would account for approximately 23% of its total advertising revenue this year, a staggering amount.

TNT Sports lost its NBA rights to NBC and Amazon, which are paying a reported average annual value of $2.6 billion and $1.8 billion, respectively, for their packages.

In the aftermath of losing the NBA, TNT Sports has added several other live sports properties, including a pair of College Football Playoff games, the French Open, a package of Big 12 and Big East games, a summer package of NASCAR races, and more, to fill out its programming lineup and maintain the carriage fees it commands from cable and satellite distributors.

So far, that strategy has worked. WBD has inked distribution deals with major carriers like Comcast and Charter for the same rates as before losing the NBA.

But losing almost a quarter of its annual ad revenue is another problem entirely. While bolstering its live sports portfolio will help the company maintain its fees from distributors, the volume of premier live sports windows the network will air is almost certain to decrease.

The NBA is a high-volume sport. TNT currently airs two nights of regular-season NBA games per week and then ramps up with even more games during the playoffs. That’s a lot of marquee inventory. Five NASCAR races, one tennis tournament, two CFP games, and some lower-tier Big 12 and Big East games certainly won’t get advertisers reaching into their pockets similarly.

As of now, TNT’s new properties are unproven on the network. Advertisers don’t really know how many viewers will tune into the French Open when it’s on TNT. But after over thirty years of airing NBA games, advertisers had a pretty good idea of how many viewers they could expect to reach on TNT for that property.

Perhaps once TNT has a few years of its new portfolio, the network can see its advertising revenue rebound. But for now, losing the NBA will be the most immediate impact.