There is a new contender in the fray.
As Discovery begins its new era of operations operating Warner Bros., HBO and Turner, all eyes are on that new company with thousands of hours of content from popular TV brands like TLC, TBS, TNT, CNN and more. How Media Will Navigate the Arena's Streaming Wars. HBO. Behind that effort, however, there could be a new sporting stalwart ready to add another deep-pocketed player to major league talks that were previously overlooked.
Warner Bros. Discovery, the newly combined company, is not only in the U.S. The U.S. will be the home of Turner Sports, but also Eurosport, a French TV network that holds the European rights to broadcast the Olympics and is available in 54 countries. In February, Discovery entered into talks that would combine Eurosport's UK business with BT Sport in the UK and Ireland, creating another overseas beach. Turner already enjoys a significant relationship with the NBA, sharing rights to the NCAA March Madness basketball championship; and the rights to Major League Baseball and National Hockey League games.
Many traditional U.S. Sports purveyors may have to give the company a facelift once known as Discovery. “I believe that Discovery-Warner, led by David Zaslav, will have a real appetite for creating their own sports content, and is likely to be on the table for major premium sports rights offerings over the next 36 months,” said Hilary Mandel. says Executive Vice President, President and Head of Media for America at IMG in an interview. "They will be a global operator, just like Disney, Comcast, Paramount, Amazon and Apple."
The new media giant comes on stage as sports rights become more important to the health of the traditional pay TV business. As more consumers choose to stream their favorite drama, comedy and reality programs on demand, live sports telecasts represent one of the few things that can generate the huge crowds Madison Avenue and TV distributors still can do. want. The rights fee has gone from excessive to prohibitive – witness Fox's decision to let "Thursday Night Football" go one season ahead of schedule so that it can focus on the games it believes its audience and business to be. Better fit with - and having no interest in fighting the Kingdom of Zaslav will only create a more intense atmosphere at the bargaining table.
Most top-tier US sports have been called off for an immediate moment. The NFL, MLB and the NHL have recently signed new rights deals that will keep them on edge for the next few years. Still, Discovery will probably find that it has little time to rest. Early-bird talks with the NBA, whose rights agreements with Turner and Disney are expected to expire after the 2024-2025 season, could quickly sparkle over the next 12 months. And there may be some college-level sports rights that unfold in the not-too-distant future.
Discovery's next steps in games won't be known until the company hires a new executive to oversee it all. On Thursday, the company revealed it was "actively exploring" to fill the role of president and CEO for Warner Bros. Discovery Sports, which will report to Zaslav. Turner Sports President Lenny Daniels and Patrick Crumb, president of the company's regional sports network, will report on the new hires.
The major advantage of Discovery is that it can offer both global reach through streaming and traditional production services, which many tech giants have been hard-pressed to replicate. Note that Amazon's new coverage of "Thursday Night Football" is being produced with help from NBC Sports, while Apple's new streaming baseball coverage is a product of the league's MLB Network.
“There will easily be opportunities for joint international bidding for some properties,” says Patrick Kreux, a former Fox Sports executive who now works as a media-industry consultant.
That may be what many leagues are looking for in the coming months. Streaming gives them the opportunity not only to reach younger consumers who are abandoning traditional cable and satellite subscriptions and linear viewing, but to reach fans in countries where games are not commonly watched. Indeed, in recent months, Paramount Plus has gone after the UEFA Champions League rights while ESPN signed a deal with La Liga.
Discovery has tried to do the opposite in recent years. It has focused on taking American sports overseas. The company launched GolfTV in 2019, a streaming joint venture with the PGA Tour, enlisting Tiger Woods as part of a broader deal to create content and programming and establish ambitious plans to make the product available worldwide by 2024. Did.
Expect the company to throw more of its sporting load overseas. "Eurosport in the UK has always been third behind Sky and BT," says Daniel Cohen, senior vice president of media rights consulting at Interpublic Group sports-management firm Octagon. "Now, you mix that unit, and you're going to have some real muscle in a tier-one market that doesn't have a lot of competition."
At home, Turner has already begun to look to the future. Its most recent rights deals with the NHL and US Soccer call for the ability to stream games on HBO Max – seeing that location as a sports hub as well as a place for movies and high-quality scripted series. Is. And the company has worked to spotlight a series of celebrity-golf matches that attract large advertising sponsorships, but do not rely on rights agreements with the league.
The only thing that will really surprise the sports world is if Discovery refuses to push for any major sports-rights packages that could emerge. “I think he has to be a more aggressive player in this area,” Cohen says.