Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said the company is now “fully engaged” in TV-rights renewal talks with the National Basketball Association.
Speaking on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call, Zaslav called the discussions, which are taking place in an exclusive negotiating window, “constructive and productive.”
Sports are a big-ticket item and Warner Bros. Discovery has been furiously cutting costs to reduce the red ink. Meanwhile, the price tag for NBA rights is expected to jump from the current rate of $1.2 billion a year. But Zaslav said sports are important to the company and its TNT Sports unit.
“Our global sports portfolio continues to provide really meaningful value to all of our platforms,“ Zaslav said. “We’re proud to be the home of one of the most coveted collections of premium sports content in the industry, along with a best-in-class talent roster and exceptional production values.”
That’s a big change from a year ago, when Zaslav said WBD didn’t need the NBA.
Having the NBA is also important to the new sports streaming venture Warner Bros. Discovery is forming with Fox and The Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN.
Zaslav said he saw WBD offering the new sports product in a bundle with its Max streaming service.
He reiterated that the venture would be targeting the 60 million U.S. households that are not in the traditional cable bundle ecosystem, particularly those under 30 who have never signed up for cable.
“They love sports and they’re on Bleacher [Report] and House of Highlights all day,” he said.
Zaslav said the joint venture product would make it easier for fans to find the games they want to watch, without going to Google to figure out what channel they’re on.
“The traditional cable industry is missing those subscribers. We think it’s very pro-consumer,” he said.
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“We have a great relationship with our existing distributors. This is a unique product that’s looking to meet a very strong demand,” Zaslav said. “We are going to be very aggressive marketing it … we don’t see a lot of people [drop] cable in order to get this.”
JB Perrette, CEO and president of global streaming at WBD, said that for each of the partners, bundling the new sports product with their existing streaming services would be a compelling offering.
Asked how that would affect Max’s current B/R Sports Add-On Tier, Perrette said the company would have more to say as it got closer to launch.
He noted that in the next few months, B/R would have March Madness and the NBA playoffs.
