- Warner Bros. Discovery is about to lose one of its best assets: the rights to air NBA games.
- Now, WBD is suing the NBA to try to void the deal the league made with Amazon.
- It may seem like a bad idea to end up in court with your long-term exercise program partner. However, WBD has put himself in an unenviable position.
Two years ago, Warner Bros. Discovery boss David Zaslav told investors he would be fine without NBA games, which his TNT network had aired for decades.
He has since changed his mind, but it was too late: The NBA has reached a new $76 billion broadcast rights deal with Disney, Comcast and Amazon, meaning next season will be the last year you’ll see the NBA on TNT.
So now Zaslav is in an extraordinary position: He’s filed a lawsuit against the NBA, demanding that they give him the game packages they decided to sell to Amazon instead.
You can read a great detailed account of WBD’s failed negotiations with the NBA from John Ourand at Puck. (TLDR: Zaslav and his team miscalculated.) But the next chapter in his story will be interesting, too.
That’s because there are a few different outcomes here — and none of them are good for WBD.
One is that WBD somehow wins its lawsuit and ultimately forces the NBA to give it the games it prefers to sell elsewhere.
I’m not a highly paid media executive, but I know that you don’t want to enter into a long-term relationship with a programming partner who is only working with you because the courts forced them to work with you.
Then there are two other possibilities: One is that WBD doesn’t get the game, but gets some sort of settlement from the NBA for allegedly breaching the contract. And the other is that WBD gets nothing out of it at all.
And both of these results are very bad for WBD.
WBD’s linear TV channels are already in steep decline — which is why the company has floated the idea of separating them from its more valuable HBO and Warner Bros. Studios assets.
But if the NBA isn’t on those channels, things get a lot trickier: Pay-TV distributors like Comcast will find it a lot easier to play hardball with WBD as they negotiate new deals. And the company’s attempts to strike direct-to-consumer deals — like the sports joint ventures it’s launching this fall with Disney and Fox — will also become a lot harder.
WBD has tried to preemptively mitigate the NBA’s losses by signing on some other sports programming, most notably some college football playoff games it somehow bought from Disney.
College football is popular. It’s not as popular as the NFL — but nothing is popular in the NFL, so it’s better than nothing. But that’s clearly not the trade-off WBD wanted. Which is why it’s leading to a legal battle where the best possible outcome is still not good — at all.
