The jockeying from TNT Sports properties to make their way to CBS following the merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery has officially begun.
At a Front Office Sports conference on Tuesday, NASCAR CEO Steve O’Donnell revealed he plans to meet with David Berson, now the head of the combined CBS-TNT sports division, to discuss the possibility of airing races allocated to TNT Sports on the CBS broadcast network. TNT Sports airs a package of five NASCAR Cup Series races each summer and recently concluded Year 2 of a seven-year pact with the motorsport circuit.
“CBS used to be a great partner of ours, Turner has been fantastic, so who knows?” O’Donnell said, per Sports Media Watch. “I think it’s an opportunity for us, especially as you look forward, to keep everybody close, but we’re very happy with the folks we currently have for sure.”
CBS has a storied history with NASCAR dating back to 1960, though the network last aired a race in 2000.
Of course, whether TNT’s races are either shifted over or simulcast on CBS in the future is largely out of NASCAR’s hands. Those decisions, at least in the near-term, have to be made within the confines of TNT’s distribution deals with pay-TV providers like Comcast and DirecTV. Those agreements guarantee certain types of premium programming, like NASCAR races, air exclusively on TNT.
Those agreements wouldn’t make NASCAR moving to CBS impossible, however. As Awful Announcing contributor and former Fox Sports Networks president Bob Thompson explained earlier this week, the “Grant of Rights” present in distribution contracts are somewhat malleable. When a network adds new rights, it can invoke a “surcharge” clause that forces distributors to pay more to carry the channel. Conversely, when a network loses rights, distributors can claw back some of the carriage fee they agreed to pay.
In other words, if there’s alignment between the network, the sports league, and the distributors about wanting to move programming off of one channel and onto another, there are ways to get a deal done. And sure enough, Puck’s John Ourand reported that these types of discussions are already happening.
There’s little doubt that CBS would like to add some summertime NASCAR races to its lineup, particularly when it could leverage its PGA Tour broadcasts as a lead-in for a Saturday night race. Of course, NASCAR would also like the added exposure of its races airing on broadcast television as opposed to cable.
It really comes down to whether or not the networks can find an arrangement that satisfies the distributors. If so, sooner or later, TNT Sports properties will begin to matriculate to CBS.