The NBA’s future with its longest-tenured partner could be in question under penny-pinching Warner boss David Zaslav.
Discussing the rising cost of sports media rights at a conference Tuesday, Zaslav said Warner Bros. Discovery (formerly WarnerMedia) has favorable deals for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, NHL and Major League Baseball Postseason and that “we don’t have to have the NBA,” per Joe Flint of The Wall Street Journal.
The NBA is by far the most expensive of Warner’s sports properties at an average of $1.2 billion per year, compared to $200 million for the NHL and $470 million for baseball. Warner splits the NCAA deal with CBS, which starting in 2026 will be worth $1.05 billion/year.
Zaslav suggested that the NBA could shift to HBO Max and that the company’s next NBA rights deal, if there is one, would have to be “a deal for the future, it can’t be a deal for the past.” The NBA’s current deals, which were struck in 2014 and went into effect two years later, expire at the end of the 2024-25 season.
Turner Sports (officially “Warner Bros. Discovery Sports” now) has held NBA rights for more than three decades. Prior to the 2016 rights deal that vaulted rights past the billion mark, the company paid an average of less than $500 million per year for the rights.
In addition to airing games on TNT, Warner also operates the NBA’s digital properties, including NBA TV, NBA.com and NBA League Pass.
CNBC reported more than a year ago that the NBA was seeking $75 billion for its next set of rights deals, a total that would seemingly guarantee a sharp increase in annual rights fees for the league’s incumbent partners. It is not quite clear whether that $75 billion goal is aspirational or realistic. ESPN and Turner are highly likely to face competition from streamers such as Amazon, Apple and Google in the next negotiations.
Zaslav has made a reputation for cost-cutting in a short time running Warner Bros. Discovery, at one point cancelling a fully-finished film in order to write off the costs of production.
(News from Joe Flint/Twitter 11.15)
