head the combined entity<\/a>, should navigate the process. \u201cDavid\u2019s role at first is to be honest with his people, and not hide. And over the next month or two, the final entity will start to take shape.\u201d<\/p>\nIn addition to cutting costs by eliminating redundancies, Ourand reports that the combined entity will likely look to cut a number of sports rights. Specifically, Ourand highlights the deals recently negotiated by TNT Sports in the wake of its loss of the NBA. These deals include the College Football Playoff sublicense with ESPN, which runs through 2028, a Big 12 football and basketball sublicense that runs through 2031, and a 10-year deal for the French Open that expires after the 2034 event.<\/p>\n
TNT signed these deals in the aftermath of its NBA loss as a survival tactic to keep its cable carriage fees at a level consistent with the fees it earned while it had the NBA. The combined entity doesn\u2019t necessarily need these deals to drive affiliate revenue considering it already has marquee rights like the NFL, March Madness, UFC, and the Masters, all of which Ourand reports are \u201cuntouchable.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reality is that Skydance probably has more sports rights than it needs,\u201d LightShed Partners analyst Rich Greenfield told Ourand. \u201cAll of the things that TNT Sports was doing to scramble to fill the hole that the NBA left\u2014Skydance doesn\u2019t need those rights anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beyond the TNT Sports shopping spree that occurred after the division lost the NBA, Ourand notes that other properties like its MLB and NHL packages could face scrutiny as well. Both of those deals expire in 2028, and TNT Sports pays over $700 million annually for the two deals.<\/p>\n
In addition to finding $6 billion of synergies, Skydance will need to pay significantly more for the NFL in 2030, when the league will almost certainly opt out of its current deal with CBS. On CNBC this week, Ellison noted CBS intends to continue its partnership with the NFL long-term.<\/p>\n
As such, Ourand posits that the company won\u2019t necessarily wait for rights deals to expire before trying to get them off the books, citing Fox\u2019s decision to get out of a long-term deal with the USGA back in 2020 by selling the rights to NBC at a discount as precedent.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s important to note, however, that Skydance\u2019s new sports entity won\u2019t solely be looking to downsize. The goal, Ourand reports, is to emphasize deals that can grow its subscription streaming businesses because it already has a strong enough linear portfolio to ensure healthy distribution fees. One possibility, Ourand reports citing a senior media executive, is an aggressive bid for Premier League rights in the U.K. as a means of growing Paramount+\u2019s international subscriber base.<\/p>\n
Even if that is the case, there\u2019s no doubt that Skydance\u2019s sports division will be cutting costs on the whole. Much of that will come from selecting which sports rights it can live without, while some will come from layoffs.<\/p>\n
The coming months will go a long way in determining exactly how Skydance envisions its sports division post-merger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery officially coming together as one company, Skydance, it\u2019s only a matter of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":875948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[26604,399,398,396,397,3094,99,37316],"class_list":["post-875947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-cbs-sports","tag-football","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-skydance","tag-sports","tag-tnt-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=875947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/875948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=875947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=875947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=875947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}