TNT Sports is still open for business, for however long that might be.
TNT Sports announced Thursday that it has struck a multi-year deal to become the exclusive English-language home of the major FIBA competitions, including this year’s women’s Basketball World Cup, next year’s men’s competition, and the 2029 EuroBasket. The deal goes into effect Wednesday with the FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup Qualifying Tournament, featuring a United States team that could include Caitlin Clark, Paige Bueckers and Angel Reese.
The FIBA rights deal is the first announced by TNT Sports since parent company Warner Bros. Discovery reached a merger agreement with Paramount last week. Until the Paramount deal was announced, TNT Sports was poised to be spun off — along with the other WBD linear cable assets — into a new independent company, Discovery Global. But assuming the Paramount-WBD merger is approved by regulators without any meaningful changes, TNT Sports is instead likely to be absorbed into CBS Sports.
Hours before Paramount overtook Netflix last week, WBD CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels — who had been set to become the CEO of Discovery Global — said that the company “continue[s] to have appetite for sports rights” and is “open for business.” It remains to be seen whether that will continue to be the case during the regulatory process and beyond. Given the near certainty that the FIBA deal was in the works long before Paramount overtook Netflix as the winning bidder in the WBD sweepstakes, there is no reason to believe it is a signal of TNT Sports’ strategy going forward.
The deal also marks the return of 5-on-5 professional basketball to TNT Sports after its loss of NBA rights. While TNT airs the women’s league Unrivaled, featuring several of the biggest stars in the women’s game, that is a 3-on-3 competition. FIBA tournaments regularly feature the best players in the NBA and WNBA.
The FIBA Basketball World Cup previously aired on the ESPN networks, and the most recent EuroBasket competition was carried on the streaming service Courtside 1891. The FIBA deal does not include any USA Basketball tune-up games leading up to the World Cup and Olympics; rights to those games were sold to NBCUniversal as part of the NBA media rights deal.
