CEO David Zaslav is attempting to reframe Warner Bros. Discovery decision not to retain broadcast rights with the NBA. WBD was unable to retain the NBA during its exclusive negotiating period and then attempted to use its match rights for Amazon's "C" package after NBC outbid TNT for the "B" package. The NBA's new media rights deals are collectively worth $76 billion over 11 years with ESPN/ABC, NBC and Amazon.
“Our job is to make sure we have enough quality sports so that we’re creating real value for the distributors. And it turns out not doing the NBA was a great decision for us,” Zaslav said. “We picked up the College Football Playoff, we picked up NASCAR in the summer, we have a great lineup globally, and we saved a huge amount of money.”
WBD retained highlight rights for the NBA and will also license out Inside the NBA to ESPN.
“A lot of the young generation don’t want to watch the whole game,” Zaslav said. “They want to go to one place. [Our highlights] are almost like a RedZone for basketball. So we think that’s a great growth engine.”
Zaslav also talked about how live sports cannot be monetized over a long-term period the way other forms of entertainment can.
“Sports is a rental business. And so you, you’ve got to look and say, ‘Are we going to be able to make money on this?’ We’re money-good on virtually all of our sports,” Zaslav said. “We’re not going to pay more than we think we can afford or we can make money on. We’d rather invest. If we saved a huge amount of money by not doing the NBA [live rights], it’s more money that we could spend on the quality content that we can make global, that we think can strategically help us.”
