Warner Bros. Discovery has added to its recent mix of live sports rights with a package of Mountain West football games.
WBD (TNT Sports) has reached a multi-year agreement to carry Mountain West college football games on truTV and Max beginning this coming season, it was announced Monday, marking the first time since TBS carried Big 12 and Pac-12 games in the mid-2000s that the erstwhile Turner Sports networks have aired a regular schedule of college football games.
WBD previously acquired rights to a handful of College Football Playoff games in a sublicensing agreement with ESPN.
This season’s schedule will consist of 14 games, starting with Sacramento State-San Jose State on August 29, and will include doubleheaders on September 7, 14 and 21 and October 12. None of the 14 games involves Pac-12 schools Oregon State and Washington State, who will play primarily Mountain West opponents this season.
The Mountain West deal is the latest in a flurry by WBD, which is widely expected to lose rights to the NBA once those negotiations are completed. In addition to the deals for the MWC and CFP, WBD has acquired rights to the French Open and Big East basketball just in the two months since its exclusive negotiating window with the NBA expired. Outside of the French Open, which will air exclusively on the TNT Sports networks, WBD is not the lead partner in any of the deals.
If not said explicitly, it would have to be the case that WBD ranks third on the depth chart of Mountain West broadcasters behind Fox Sports and CBS Sports. It is almost certain that the WBD games are coming not from the existing Fox or CBS inventory but from the leftover slate of games that aired under the banner of the Mountain West Network.
