Warner Bros. Discovery Aims to Become Aggressive ‘Global Operator’ in Wide World of Sports
11.04.2022 - 16:57
/ variety.com
Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorThere’s a new contender in the arena.As Discovery begins its new era of operating Warner Bros., HBO and Turner, all eyes are on how the new company will navigate the media sector’s streaming wars with thousands of hours of content from popular TV brands like TLC, TBS, TNT, CNN and HBO. Behind that effort, however, could look a new sports giant that is poised to add another deep-pocketed player vying for major league negotiations that it previously ignored.Warner Bros.
Discovery, the newly combined company, will be home not only to Turner Sports in the U.S., but also Eurosport, a French TV network that holds European rights to broadcast the Olympics and is available in 54 countries. In February, Discovery entered talks that would combine Eurosport’s U.K.
business with that of BT Sport in Britain and Ireland, creating another overseas beachhead. Turner already enjoys a significant relationship with the NBA, shared rights to the NCAA March Madness basketball championships; and rights to Major League Baseball and National Hockey League games.
Many of the traditional U.S. sports purveyors may have to give the company once known as Discovery a new look.
“I believe Discovery-Warner led by David Zaslav will have a real appetite to build out their sports content, and they are likely to be at the table for major premium sports rights offerings over the next 36 months,” says Hillary Mandel, executive vice president and head of media for the Americas at IMG, in an interview. “They will be a global operator in the same way as Disney, Comcast, Paramount, Amazon and Apple are.”The new media behemoth arrives on the scene as sports rights have become ever more critical to the health of the traditional pay
.