Warner Bros Discovery

Subterms

    Latest story

    113 Shares99 Views

    Warner Bros. Discovery Sues N.B.A. Over TV Rights Deal

    by

    The company is trying to make the league accept its match of Amazon’s bid to broadcast games starting with the 2025-26 season.Warner Bros. Discovery sued the National Basketball Association on Friday in an attempt to force the league to accept its offer to match Amazon’s bid to broadcast games.On Wednesday, the N.B.A. announced that it had reached media rights agreements with Disney, Comcast and Amazon. The deals are scheduled to take effect in the 2025-26 season and will collectively pay the N.B.A. about $77 billion over the next 11 years. That left Warner Bros. Discovery, a current rights holder, set to lose the league at the end of next season.“Given the N.B.A.’s unjustified rejection of our matching of a third-party offer, we have taken legal action to enforce our rights,” Warner Bros. Discovery said in a statement after the lawsuit was filed in New York State Supreme Court. “We strongly believe this is not just our contractual right, but also in the best interest of fans who want to keep watching our industry-leading N.B.A. content.”Mike Bass, a spokesman for the league, said, “Warner Bros. Discovery’s claims are without merit, and our lawyers will address them.”Amazon entered the negotiations during Warner Bros. Discovery’s exclusive negotiating window at Warner Bros. Discovery’s request, according to two people familiar with the talks. During that period, Warner Bros. Discovery balked at the N.B.A.’s request for last-minute changes to the company’s package, and the exclusive window closed without a deal.Although conversations between the two sides continued, Warner Bros. Discovery, whose TNT network has broadcast N.B.A. games since the 1980s, found itself on the outside as the N.B.A. quickly moved on to other partners. The company’s executives insisted privately that they planned to exercise their matching rights under the current nine-year agreement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in Basket

      N.B.A. Announces Lucrative Rights Deals With Disney, Comcast and Amazon

      by

      The league rejected a bid by Warner Bros. Discovery to match Amazon’s offer.The National Basketball Association announced new rights agreements with Disney, Comcast and Amazon on Wednesday after rejecting a rival bid by Warner Bros. Discovery that would have kept games on its TNT network, which has broadcast the N.B.A. since the 1980s.The companies will collectively pay more than $76 billion over 11 years, according to four people familiar with the negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the financial details. That will substantially increase the league’s annual revenue and reflects the continued importance of live sports programming even as streaming has reconfigured the entertainment industry.In making the announcement, the league said it had rejected Warner Bros. Discovery’s bid this week to match Amazon’s offer for its share of the package.“Throughout these negotiations, our primary objective has been to maximize the reach and accessibility of our games for our fans,” the league said in a statement. “Our new arrangement with Amazon supports this goal by complementing the broadcast, cable and streaming packages that are already part of our new Disney and NBCUniversal arrangements.” (NBCUniversal is owned by Comcast.)“All three partners have also committed substantial resources to promote the league and enhance the fan experience,” the statement added.The new deals, which include N.B.A. and some W.N.B.A. games, will take effect with the 2025-26 season and are more than two and a half times the average annual value of the league’s current rights agreements.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Basket

      NBA Agrees to Massive Rights Deals With Disney, Comcast and Amazon

      by

      The agreements, set to begin after next season, could potentially pay the league about $76 billion over 11 years.The National Basketball Association’s Board of Governors has approved a set of agreements for the rights to show the league’s games, Commissioner Adam Silver said on Tuesday, moving one step closer to completing deals that would reshape how the sport is watched over the next decade.Mr. Silver declined to discuss any financial details or even the companies involved, though there have been reports for months that Disney, Comcast and Amazon were close to deals with the league. TNT, which is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, has shown N.B.A. games since the 1980s, but its prominent on-air personalities like Charles Barkley talked during the playoffs about how they worried that the network would lose the rights after next season, the last covered by the current nine-year TV deal.The companies are expected to pay the N.B.A. a total of about $76 billion over 11 years. On average, ESPN would pay the N.B.A. about $2.6 billion annually, NBC around $2.5 billion and Amazon roughly $1.8 billion, according to three people familiar with the agreements, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the financial details.The Board of Governors voted to approve the deals at its yearly meeting in Las Vegas. The N.B.A. must now present the deals to Warner Bros. Discovery, and once that happens, the company will have five days to match one of them to remain in the mix.“We did approve this stage of those media proposals, but as you all know there are other rights that need to be worked through with existing partners,” Mr. Silver said.Warner Bros. Discovery was expected to try to match Amazon’s offer, according to two people familiar with the company’s thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the negotiations.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares139 Views

      in Basket

      As N.B.A. TV Deal Nears, Warner Bros. Discovery Is on the Outside

      by

      The company’s TNT channel and the N.B.A. have long been inextricably linked, but that may end after next season. Plus, Charles Barkley is retiring.Warner Bros. Discovery executives thought they had given the National Basketball Association a proposal it would accept.In April, after months of negotiations, the company made an offer to pay billions of dollars to the league for the rights to continue showing its games on TNT, as well as its Max streaming service. TNT has shown N.B.A. games since the 1980s, and its “Inside the NBA” is widely considered one of the best-ever sports studio shows.But with the end of Warner Bros. Discovery’s exclusive negotiating window looming, the N.B.A. insisted on changing the package of games the company would receive, according to two people familiar with the negotiations, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private dealings. Warner Bros. Discovery balked, and while the two sides have continued negotiating, the company now finds itself on the verge of losing the rights to televise the sport with which it has become inextricably linked. And on Friday night, the beating heart of “Inside the NBA,” the Hall of Famer Charles Barkley, said he would be retiring from TV after next season.“The first thing anybody thinks about when you say TNT is the N.B.A.,” said John Skipper, the former president of ESPN.Media companies, including Warner Bros. Discovery, were prepared for bruising negotiations with the N.B.A. Sports rights remain an extremely valuable commodity for traditional TV networks, and companies increasingly also see them as a way to attract more subscribers to their streaming services.The league made clear it wanted a sizable increase on the roughly $2.66 billion in total it receives annually, on average, from Warner Bros. Discovery and ESPN under its current rights agreements, which went into effect in 2016. Executives at those companies knew if they wanted to retain N.B.A. rights they would have to pay more for fewer games so that the N.B.A. could create a third package of games to sell.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Basket

      Charles Barkley Has Thoughts on the Future of ‘Inside the NBA’

      by

      Next season could be the last for TNT’s influential and beloved studio show, and Charles Barkley, for one, will not be going quietly.The future of “Inside the NBA” was already a sensitive topic when Charles Barkley stepped into an elevator in Minneapolis after Game 3 of the Western Conference finals late Friday night. Barkley’s on-air candor as an analyst is a key reason that the studio show has become so influential and beloved among basketball fans and around the league.But these are tense times for the show and those who work on it. Warner Bros. Discovery has not secured the rights to continue broadcasting N.B.A. games on TNT beyond next season. Without those, the long-term future of “Inside the NBA” is uncertain. So when Barkley, who had already batted away several attempts by security and public relations officials to prevent him from doing an interview, ushered me into an elevator filled with his co-workers, not everyone was happy.Kenny Smith, Barkley’s on-screen foil, voiced his irritation. But Barkley, as he has done throughout his decades in the public eye, made clear that he wouldn’t be muzzled.“Hey, man, I can talk to who I want to,” Barkley said to Smith, using an expletive. Others in the elevator shifted uncomfortably.“You should do that out there,” Smith said, suggesting the interview be done outside the elevator.Barkley turned to me: “Don’t worry about him.”“She should clear it through Turner,” Smith said. “She should do it the right way.”Why was it so important for him to talk, I asked Barkley, even if others around him didn’t want him to? He nodded to the impact the uncertainty has on staff members who work on the show. And not just the well-known, on-air personalities: Barkley, Smith, Shaquille O’Neal and the host, Ernie Johnson.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Basket

      Tug-of-War Over N.B.A. Rights Provides Glimpse of Media’s Future

      by

      The league’s longtime television partners, including ESPN and Turner, are undergoing major changes, which could alter how games are watched.The National Basketball Association’s season tipped off on Tuesday with stars like LeBron James and Nikola Jokic beginning the long quest for a title. But the action that will have longer-term ramifications for the league, and the media and entertainment landscape, is happening off the court.The companies holding the rights to show N.B.A. games — Disney, which owns ESPN and ABC, and Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of TNT — are collectively paying the league $24 billion over nine years for that privilege. But their contracts expire after next season, and the N.B.A. hopes to more than double the money it receives for rights in the next deal, according to several people familiar with the league’s expectations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing negotiations.It won’t get that without a fight. After decades in which sports leagues garnered ever bigger piles of money for the rights to show their games, there are signs that media and technology companies are under increasing pressure to justify the exorbitant amounts they spend on broadcast rights. Interest rates are high, Wall Street is demanding profitability over growth, and streaming has reconfigured the entertainment industry.The result of the N.B.A.’s negotiations will say a lot about the future of broadcast networks, the cable bundle, streaming services and the sports media ambitions of technology companies.“I think in this era that we’re coming out of, this is the last of the big deals,” said John Kosner, who advises sports media and tech start-ups after a two-decade career as an executive at ESPN.The National Football League, the most valuable sports league in the world, did not quite double its rights fees when it signed new agreements in 2021. And that was before the stock market declined, interest rates rose and wars began in Europe and the Middle East.Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery, which have televised N.B.A. games for more than two decades, aren’t necessarily in positions to shell out lots of cash, either.Disney has carried out extreme cost-cutting and layoffs this year, and its chief executive, Robert A. Iger, has said the company is considering “strategic options” to sell equity in ESPN. Warner Bros. Discovery has also cut costs, and said in August that it had a debt load of nearly $50 billion following the merger of the two companies last year.The most likely scenario, according to the people familiar with the negotiations, is that Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery will sign new agreements with the N.B.A. to televise fewer games. The N.B.A. declined to comment for this article.The two companies together show about 160 regular-season games each year, as well as the playoffs and N.B.A. finals. Most games are shown on cable (ESPN and TNT), with a handful on ABC.For both companies, N.B.A. broadcast rights still represent a valuable bargaining chip in negotiations with their biggest customers: cable and satellite companies. Those distributors pay billions of dollars to Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery for the rights to show their cable channels, including TNT and ESPN, based in part on the expectation that those channels will air sports like N.B.A. basketball.An N.B.A. package would also help both companies shift to a streaming future. Warner Bros. Discovery recently added a live sports package to its streaming service, Max, while ESPN has been vocal about having a stand-alone streaming offering for its flagship channel in the near future.Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery are not likely to be the only companies showing N.B.A. games, though. If those companies end up showing fewer games in the new deal, the league may create a third rights package, perhaps even a fourth, of the games no longer included in the first two packages, as well as the league’s new in-season tournament.The most likely buyers for those packages of games are Amazon and NBC, according to the people familiar with the negotiations.Top executives at Fox, CBS and the Google-owned YouTube have said that they are unlikely to put in serious bids for broadcasting rights. The intentions of Netflix and Apple are less clear, but Netflix has long said it is uninterested in paying the kind of prices the N.B.A. is looking for. Apple has largely committed itself to a sports strategy of buying up all of a league’s domestic and international rights, like in its recent deal with Major League Soccer. That isn’t possible with the N.B.A.Amazon and NBC are attractive partners to the N.B.A. for very different reasons.For a generation, most N.B.A. games have been watchable only with a cable package. But the collapse of the cable bundle — from around 100 million households with a cable package a decade ago to around 70 million today — has made old-school broadcast networks, the most widely distributed television channels, more attractive. With CBS and Fox as unlikely bidders, the league could want games to be shown on NBC’s broadcast channel.As for Amazon, it is seen as highly unlikely that the N.B.A. — a league that is proud of being forward-thinking regarding technology — would sign a new rights agreement with only traditional media companies, according to some of the people familiar with the negotiations. Amazon has long been interested in broadcasting the N.B.A., according to a person familiar with the league’s negotiation history, and it has won plaudits for how it has handled Thursday night N.F.L. games.The media and technology companies declined to comment for this article. CNBC, Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal have all previously reported on parts of the N.B.A.’s media-rights negotiations.The league has a number of other media assets it could leverage. Most N.B.A. games are not shown nationally. Instead, they are broadcast in their local markets, with individual teams controlling the rights to sell those games. Teams have traditionally sold those rights to regional sports networks, but those are collapsing, leaving teams looking for alternatives.If Diamond Sports, which is in bankruptcy proceedings, collapses, the N.B.A. could suddenly regain control of the local rights for about half the teams in the league. If that happens, it might sell some of those rights to a national partner. But that would require the league to work with its team owners — as well as current rights holders — for the complicated task of navigating roughly 30 different local agreements.It would also leave out a number of high-profile teams, like the New York Knicks and the Los Angeles Lakers, which have long-term local rights agreements with successful regional sports networks.The N.B.A. could also sell some international rights. The rights to show N.B.A. games in some basketball-mad countries like China could be extremely valuable, especially as domestic streaming companies seek new markets. But the league — unique in American sports in that it sells all its international rights directly rather than working with third parties — is seen as more likely to sell those rights country by country to the highest bidder.The real wild card if the N.B.A. looks to do something groundbreaking could be its old stalwart: ESPN.Disney and ESPN executives have spoken in recent months with private equity firms, tech and mobile companies and sports leagues, and have concluded that if they are to give up equity, it should be to a league, or leagues, as part of a long-term partnership, according to two people familiar with ESPN’s plans.Analysts have valued ESPN at $25 billion to $50 billion, meaning a potential partner would have to trade billions in value for even a small stake. While a partner could pay Disney for a stake in ESPN, what the company is really looking for is exclusive content, some of those involved in the negotiations said.Disney executives have spoken with a number of sports leagues, including the N.B.A., about selling them equity in ESPN and what the company would want out of such an arrangement. According to one of the people, the benefits sought by ESPN in a partnership could include more closely integrating a league’s social media operations with the network’s, content like documentary rights and more in-game audio from players, distributing games it does not have the broadcast rights to within its apps and working together on marketing. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Golf

      Why You Can’t Watch LIV Golf on American Television

      by

      The human rights record of its funder, Saudi Arabia, may be the least of the new tour’s challenges when it comes to getting on American television.For the Saudi-backed upstart LIV Golf tour, the strategy for luring top golfers like Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson away from the prestige and stability of the PGA Tour was simple: Offer cash, and lots of it.The arrival of the new tour and the defection of PGA Tour stars were major disruptions in what has been a stable and even staid sport. But when the first LIV event was finally held outside London last weekend after months of anticipation, it was not shown on television in the United States. And it’s unlikely that any American network will be broadcasting LIV events anytime soon.The reason boils down to this: The networks are happy airing the PGA Tour.“We are positioned as the home of golf in this country,” said Pete Bevacqua, the chairman of the NBC Sports, which shows by far the most golf in the United States. “We are not only satisfied where we are, but unbelievably pleased where we are.”Some golfers couldn’t resist the pull of the new tour, whose events are shorter than the PGA Tour’s (three days instead of four) and offer huge payouts, with individual winners receiving $4 million and the members of winning teams sharing $3 million, far more than most PGA Tour events. Even last-place finishers get $120,000; PGA Tour players who don’t make the cut after two rounds get nothing.Charl Schwartzel of South Africa won $4 million for winning the inaugural LIV Golf tournament. He pocketed another $750,000 because his team won the team competition.Alastair Grant/Associated PressBut the LIV tour got nowhere with those who might have aired its events in the United States. Representatives for LIV Golf spoke with most American broadcasters, but did not have substantive discussions about a media rights agreement with any of them, according to people familiar with those discussions. LIV broached the idea of buying time to show the London tournament on Fox — an inversion of the normal business relationship, where the media company pays the sports organization to show its event — but discussions did not go far.In the end, the London tournament was not on American broadcast TV or popular sports streaming platforms such as Peacock and ESPN+. Instead, golf fans could watch it on the streaming service DAZN, YouTube, Facebook or LIV Golf’s website, without commercials.Limited viewership numbers suggest not many of them did. The final round of the London event attracted an average of 68,761 viewers on YouTube and fewer than 5,000 on Facebook, according to Apex Marketing, a sports and entertainment analytics firm. On the same weekend, 812,000 viewers watched the final round of the PGA Tour’s Canadian Open on Golf Channel, and 2.78 million watched when coverage switched over to CBS.The absence of a media rights agreement would normally threaten the survival of a new sports league. But LIV Golf is not a commercial entity with a profit imperative. It is bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund and part of a larger effort by the kingdom to improve its image around the world. Players who have joined the LIV tour have been accused of helping to “sportswash” Saudi Arabia’s record of human rights abuses, including the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.LIV did not respond to a request for comment.But NBC and other broadcast networks have a long list of reasons other than reputational damage to steer clear of the new venture.LIV’s main barrier to entry in the United States is that most major media companies are deeply invested in the success of its competitor, the PGA Tour. NBC, CBS and ESPN are collectively in the first year of a nine-year, $6 billion-plus agreement to show the PGA Tour in the United States, while Warner Bros. Discovery (which owns TNT and TBS) is paying the PGA Tour $2 billion to show the tour worldwide.The media companies are not contractually restricted from showing LIV, according to the people familiar with the deals, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private agreements. But they believe that doing so would draw attention away from the tour on which they are spending billions.Fox, which has a history of risk-taking in sports (it is currently investing in spring football), might seem like a good candidate to team up with LIV, but Fox does not televise any golf, and that is by design. The network had the rights to broadcast the U.S. Open through 2026, but paid money to give up those rights to NBC.Even if networks wanted to take a chance on LIV Golf, the logistical challenges would be significant. Golf monopolizes entire weekends throughout the year and is more expensive to produce than arena- and stadium-based sports. (Golf presents a particularly difficult hurdle for Fox, which rarely puts sports on its streaming service, Tubi, meaning it is difficult to show golf when schedules collide.)Phil Mickelson at the LIV Golf tournament near London. The winner of 45 PGA Tour events, he was suspended by the PGA Tour after announcing he would play on the LIV tour.Paul Childs/ReutersLIV Golf also did not have any stars on board until recently, and it is not clear whether it will attract enough top golfers to make its events attractive to fans. Questions about the tour’s backing have been uncomfortable for those who have joined.“I would ask any player who has left or any player who would ever consider leaving, ‘Have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?’” Jay Monahan, the commissioner of the PGA Tour, said in a televised interview Sunday.Players who have signed contracts with LIV have been booted from the PGA Tour, though that could soon become the subject of litigation. Players have also been dropped by sponsors, either because of the association with Saudi Arabia or because companies don’t want to support golfers competing on a tour few are watching.A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 6A new series. More