It paid a hefty price, but Paramount has been granted its desired merger with Skydance.
The FCC voted 2-1 along party lines to approve the Paramount-Skydance merger on Thursday, completing an on-again, off-again saga that involved heavy-handed regulators, a questionable lawsuit, resignations, cancellations, and no shortage of on-air opprobrium.
None of the drama involved CBS Sports, which is expected to become a bigger player in sports television as a result of the merger. While retaining its NFL rights package will no doubt be the top priority — the league is a virtual lock to opt out of its current media deals by the end of this decade — CBS will have opportunities to add to its rights portfolio in the coming years if it so chooses.
Rights to the 2030 FIFA men’s World Cup have yet to be awarded and the current Major League Baseball and NHL rights deals expire in 2028. (CBS, it should be noted, has not held rights to any “Big Four” league other than the NFL since it last aired the World Series in 1993.)
It should be noted that Skydance is not exactly Amazon, Google, Disney or Comcast. “New Paramount” will be closer in size to Fox Corporation than to those corporate giants. But in a sports rights marketplace where even ESPN is tightening its belt, a newly aggressive CBS could take advantage of a reluctant market.
Recent media mergers have not had a positive impact on sports broadcasting. AT&T’s 2018 acquisition of Time Warner — which was held up by government regulators and ultimately had to be approved by a judge — eventually begat Warner Bros. Discovery, which is now in the process of spinning off TNT and its sister networks into a new uncertain venture.
After Disney acquired most 21st Century Fox assets in 2018, it was forced by the government to divest the Fox Sports RSNs — ultimately dooming them to a bankruptcy from which they were lucky to emerge.
One might have to go back to Comcast’s acquisition of NBC Universal in 2009 to find a merger that benefited the industry. That deal combined NBC Sports with Comcast-owned Golf Channel and Versus, the latter of which was renamed NBCSN. But even that success was short-lived as NBC shut down NBCSN in 2021 and is in the process of spinning off Golf Channel.
