Warner Bros. Discovery CEO sees NBA rights loss paving the way for growth

Despite the NBA's role in helping TNT (US) expand its audience and increase affiliate fees over the past 35 years, Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. President and CEO David Zaslav said the end of the company's US NBA rights deal in 2025 is a positive development overall.

In 2024, the NBA secured a groundbreaking 11-year, $76 billion partnership with Disney, Comcast Corp. and Amazon.com Inc., marking a 164.1% increase from the previous rights agreement, valued at $6.9 billion annually. Warner Bros. Discovery, a longtime rights holder, was excluded from the deal. Although Warner Bros. Discovery initially fought to retain a package, the two sides ultimately agreed that TNT would lose regular and postseason game rights while retaining access to some NBA highlights and content, as well as international media rights in specific regions of Northern Europe and Latin America.

"I think it turns out not doing the NBA was a great decision for us," Zaslav said at a Morgan Stanley media conference. The funds that would have been allocated to sports can now be redirected to properties owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, which are "not rents," unlike those associated with sports, he said.

"If we save a huge amount of money by not doing the NBA, it's more money that we could spend on the quality content that we can make global that we think can strategically help us," Zavlav noted. The CEO cited "Lord of the Rings," "Game of Thrones," "Superman" and "Wonder Woman" and their fiscal contributions to Warner Bros. Discovery.

"We make a lot of money on those platforms by bringing joy and excitement to people through content, but also through merchandising. And it's ours, it's ours forever. Sports is a rental business," Zaslav said. "We're not going to pay more than we think we can afford or we can make money on."

Regarding the NBA content that Warner Bros. Discovery retained, Zaslav said the company can present them via its House of Highlights offering globally over the course of the league's new 11-year packages, which kicks off with the 2025–26 season later in 2025.

"We think that's going to be a place that's growing pretty significantly. A lot of the young generations don't want to watch the whole game, they want to go to one place,” said Zaslav. "It's almost like a red zone for basketball. We think that's a great growth engine, and we have the NBA in a number of markets outside the US."

Moreover, the savings from not renewing the NBA contract enabled Warner Bros. Discovery to acquire rights to other sports, such as college football, which includes sublicensing College Football Playoff games from ESPN (US) and NASCAR, among others.

Those properties helped the company with its recent multiyear distribution deals, which provide Warner Bros. Discovery with greater stability and "forecastability," the CEO said. However, the linear networks have been in decline in recent years, resulting in the company taking a $9.1 billion impairment charge in 2024.

S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan estimates TNT's average monthly subscriber fee at $2.89 in 2024 and $2.33 in 2025.