Published December 26, 2025 06:55PM
Sports media rights function as a critical link holding the entire global sports economic structure and system together – and recent developments in the pending sale of Warner Brothers – Discovery (WBD) could redefine how viewers access and watch sports in the future. The impending sale, whether to the original suitor Netflix or the unsolicited counter-bidder Paramount, revolves primarily around gaining control of the Warner Bros. movie business and HBO. But it could also help to determine the future of pro cycling TV coverage, since WBD currently holds the majority of the WorldTour content rights in many of the world’s most important broadcast markets, and offers approximately 300 races annually across all disciplines. While this issue is likely to be one of or perhaps the most under-recognized aspect of the on-going mega-deal and all the financial and political rumors swirling around it, it could be very important to cycling fans.
The constantly-changing saga of this bidding war has been extensively covered by the business, legal and political media ever since WBD’s CEO, David Zaslav, announced that the company would evaluate “strategic options” earlier this year. Netflix’s $82.7 billion offer did not include WBD’s cable channels or sports portfolio, which contains the Eurosport and TNT channels that carry pro cycling. Notably, the company had earlier suggested one potential plan which would have split the company into two parts – with these sports, cable, and specialty content assets to be called Discovery Global.
Netflix has historically been averse to live sports and the burdens of acquiring and maintaining sports licensing rights. By decoupling the cable and sports properties (including CNN, more on that below), WBD could potentially spin those assets off to existing shareholders or sell them to a different buyer, likely yielding a higher combined price than Paramount’s current tender. That, in fact, is the angle that Netflix promoted, to support the attractiveness of their offer. However, many factions within the creative development and entertainment side of the industry denounced the potential merger, worried that it would concentrate too much power in a single company, and that it could constrain the development of new television and film projects in the future. Furthermore, a marriage of what are essentially the #1 and #3 streaming content providers could reduce theater distribution for movies, should Netflix try to shift consumers to an all-subscriber model. In short, the Netflix deal might kill Hollywood as we know it.
The “hostile” Paramount counter-offer of $108 billion which emerged a few days later targeted all of WBD’s holdings, including the sports licenses and cable channels, at a substantial premium above current market valuation. More significantly, if successful, the company intended to merge CBS Sports and TNT Sports to create a juggernaut of sports media license ownership and content across broadcast TV, cable, and streaming. In addition, Paramount promised the release of 30 movies in theaters each year, as a counterpoint to the Netflix offer. However, this promise came with concerns regarding the details of entertainment programming development, distribution, and consumer access freedom. Complications around the Paramount offer could snowball as anti-trust regulatory clearances are considered.
Legally, there are a multitude of hurdles both bids must clear, not the least of which are the FTC anti-trust review and FCC approvals; on paper, the Paramount bid appears least likely to succeed because of the monopolistic power shift it would hold over the entertainment, sports, and media broadcast industry. However, this is where the business and legal concerns begin to intersect with the political arena.
The Paramount bid led by David Ellison originally included funding from Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, as well as money from Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and the Qatar Investment Authority, although Kushner’s fund has reportedly since backed up. And it was reported that Ellison’s father, Larry, the CEO of Oracle (and a couple weeks ago, at least briefly, the richest person on the planet) has guaranteed a significant portion of the bid with his own money; i.e., making the deal less contingent upon financing considerations. Although the situation is still unfolding, it would hardly be surprising if Paramount’s offer were subtly (or otherwise) favored by President Trump, due to the participation of Kushner and his long friendship with the senior Ellison.
More recently, in mid-December, WBD signaled its preference to proceed ahead with the Netflix deal. However, the saga may just be beginning. As of December 26, rumors were emerging that rather than increase their offer, Paramount might be pulling out of the deal altogether and initiating a lawsuit against the directors of Warner Bros., charging that the company unfairly managed the bidding process. If true, this would throw the whole transaction into even greater doubt.
At this point it’s not at all clear how the process will proceed but it is clearly going to be politically charged and will definitely present numerous globally consequential ramifications. One of the political factors well understood in the media is President Trump’s disdain for WBD’s CNN and his desire to “cancel” the network. According to multiple sources, both Ellisons have indicated that, if it became the successful bidder, Paramount would somehow combine CNN with CBS News. In terms of recent historical precedent, when Paramount acquired CBS in the Skydance deal earlier this year, among other things it gutted the CBS news organization, replaced its head with a right-leaning executive and cancelled outspoken Trump critic Stephen Colbert’s popular late night talk show.
On the other hand, Trump also took a subtle swing at Paramount and the Ellisons two weeks ago, saying that “none of them are particularly great friends of mine,” presumably after the iconic CBS news show “60 Minutes” led off its Sunday night show with a profile of Trump’s newest enemy Marjorie Taylor Greene. Trump’s role, whether direct or implicit – through his influence over every deal-making or deal-breaking federal agency – may ultimately determine which suitor wins this contest.
It’s therefore somewhat ironic that over 35 years ago, Donald Trump’s decision to sponsor the eponymous Tour de Trump helped carry forward American racing and contributed to the globalization of the sport. That race bridged the Coors Classic, transitioned into the Tour du Pont, and later led to a Tour of California high point that kept U.S. fan interest high and put the eyes of a global sport on its American stop. His influence could once again shape the future of professional cycling; regardless of the outcome it could potentially be for the betterment of the sport – although it also could come with a hefty case of economic heartburn.
WBD’s sports media rights are considerable, but its Eurosport and TNT cycling related holdings are but a rounding error in its broad spectrum of football, soccer, tennis, and international sports events. If the deal goes in the Netflix direction, all of those sports assets could be spun off into Discovery Global – which would end up as either an independent company owned by current WBD shareholders, or with a new owner. In either case, the company could try to find a new formula to package pro cycling. When Discovery killed its GCN+ platform only two years ago, for an apparent lack of viewers and profit, the message then seemed clear: cycling’s fan base was not broad enough to invest in as a core product, but was maybe just popular enough to hold the rights, to at least to differentiate WBD’s sports subscriptions from other streaming providers. In a smaller, and presumably more nimble spin-off business environment, that differentiation could again become cycling’s strength.
If Paramount were to come out on top, virtually every other sport in the potentially merged CBS portfolio would already command greater viewer interest, advertiser investment and – more critically – rapidly increasing licensing fees; thus, it’s difficult to imagine a scenario where any cycling event other than possibly the Tour de France displaces that broadcast time or streaming capacity. As a matter of course, broadcasters routinely axe less or unprofitable content scheduling in favor of content with higher fan base demand in the same time slots. Or, they move the streaming content into higher-cost tiers to squeeze everything they can from the content’s value; i.e., if you want to watch more cycling, you’re going to have to pay for it. Unfortunately, live cycling content is currently not profitable at scale for its broadcaster licensees; as a niche sport, it can only be successful as live entertainment when it is presented during prime viewing hours to a large enough target audience that activates marketing/advertising, or when subsidized by a pay-to-play production fee.
Highlighting this state of affairs, the Tour was put behind WBD’s Eurosport paywall after the 2025 race, meaning there will be no free to air live coverage of the event in the U.K. for the first time since the 1970s – one of the sport’s most important non-European markets. In fact, outside of pro road cycling’s core European markets, there is virtually no free to air coverage of the sport, period. Pro road cycling has drastically retreated from the Armstrong Era’s broadcast ratings highs – a period of Americanization and an accompanying personality cult which drove greater international recognition. The sport won’t likely expand – particularly in the U.S. – without serious changes to its format, schedule, governance and oversight, and TV presentation.
Understanding this uncomfortable reality can help us to analyze and shine a light on cycling’s optimal path forward. And much the same as rocket trajectories, baseball analytics, or your monthly entertainment budget, the numbers don’t lie. By Nielsen measurements, Paramount and Netflix each hover at about 8% during any particular month for total consumer viewing time, fluctuating due to the impact of NFL football on Paramount’s loading. WBD comes in at just over 5%, while YouTube and Disney dominate the number one and two positions, at between 11-12%. Any merger combination of Netflix-WBD or Paramount-WBD instantaneously creates an apex competitor to YouTube and Disney. But a Paramount deal would be heavily vested in the sports component of the portfolio, potentially creating greater risks due to the escalating costs of maintaining league-level media licensing rights. It would somehow have to monetize those expenses, and cycling simply won’t contribute to the bottom line.
Therefore, in a Paramount win, cycling could very well lose, as legacy WBD sports rights expire or are otherwise turned back to the race organizers. This would further exacerbate cycling’s current problem – where the broadcast rights are fractured across a never-ending array of geographically-restricted rights holders. A Netflix win increases the likelihood that cycling coverage would survive under the likely Discovery Global spin-off. Although the ultimate ownership and strategic direction of that post-WBD entity is completely unknowable at this point in time, the cycling “package” would be a sale-ready or investment-attractive asset with intrinsic fan continuity and growth capability.
The entire media world is paying close attention to this deal, and there seem to be new twists to the deal about every other hour. Few recent business transactions have attracted so much attention from the political perspective, and the interest has perhaps less to do with the various anti-trust concerns or even the impact on creative content, as it does on simply who wins – who is able to command a greater political power or influence over the process. But, if history is any lesson, when mega-deals occur between massive companies who are already the top players in a heavily consolidated industry (and especially if there are completely ulterior motives at work, like promises to fire certain CNN news anchors) the public is rarely the winner.
Until a final deal is struck and approved, which could take months or even years, cycling will remain caught in the broader instability of the sports-rights economy. For cycling, the only constant seems to be that coverage keeps getting more expensive, more complex to access, and less predictable for its handful of long-suffering fans.