As AT&T looks to buy Time Warner for $85.4 billion, much of the media focus has been on HBO and CNN, two of the gems in Time Warner’s massive content portfolio. Indeed, AT&T (T) would obtain one of the leading cable news networks and what is arguably the leader in premium original television.
But the big tie-up would also have a major impact on sports television.
Time Warner (TWX) owns Turner Sports, which owns TBS, TNT, TruTV, and a swath of sports TV and digital rights along with them. Viewers of these channels won’t see any immediate change, but AT&T will enjoy ownership of the remainder of these contracts, and when they expire, will likely get aggressive in renewing them as well as inking entirely new deals.
TBS has baseball rights through 2021, after it renewed its deal with MLB (as did Fox) in 2012. Each year, TBS gets to show 13 Sunday games and either the NLCS or ALCS (it alternates).
TNT has basketball rights through 2025, after it renewed its deal with the NBA (as did ABC and ESPN) in 2014. From the coming NBA season on, TNT shows 64 regular season games (including opening night and Thursday doubleheaders) and the All-Star Game.
TBS, TNT, and TruTV have NCAA basketball rights through 2032, after Turner tacked another eight years onto its deal this year. Turner gets to show early-round tournament games on those three channels, and the Final Four alternates with CBS.
And that’s all just television. Turner has expansive sports digital rights, including ownership and management of: NBA.com; NBA TV; NCAA.com; and March Madness Live.
Turner isn’t Time Warner’s only sports asset. HBO brings to the table an extensive annual boxing lineup, plus programs of varying value like “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” (which carries investigative cachet) and “Any Given Wednesday with Bill Simmons” (which is “tanking,” according to an August report). Warner Bros., also part of Time Warner, last year struck an extensive content-creation deal with LeBron James’s production company SpringHill Entertainment, which created the STARZ show “Survivor’s Remorse.”
AT&T, thanks to its acquisition of DirecTV two years ago, already owns NFL Sunday Ticket, which gives football fans a digital subscription to out-of-market Sunday games.
So, what does all this mean? Obviously AT&T’s sports media footprint gets a whole lot bigger, all at once. But the impact on sports viewers may be slower to appear. For one thing, AT&T becomes a likely bidder for future rights deals when they become available, such as the coveted Monday Night Football package ESPN renewed with the NFL in 2011, which expires in 2021. As the sports television blog Awful Announcing pointed out, Turner “would love to get back into the professional football business.”