Losing NBA rights is a 'major blow' for WBD: Analyst
The National Basketball Association (NBA) has officially rejected Warner Bros. Discovery's (WBD) bid to keep streaming NBA games on its TNT platform. Tim Nollen, Macquarie U.S. equity research senior media tech analyst joins Market Domination to shares his thoughts on this development.
Nollen says it's clear that the NBA was "a valuable property for TNT," benefiting both its cable TV ad business and "their ability to secure carriage fees." He notes that the biggest loss is the opportunity to stream games on Max, as "streaming is the present and future of TV." While WBD has a strong content lineup, Nollen points out that "without the NBA, that is their biggest piece... of sports content that which will now be going away." Nollen claims that though the rights are expensive, he views the NBA as "an essential property" for WBD to keep.
"I think the importance of the NBA probably cannot be understated, and therefore it's a major blow, I'd say, to not have the NBA going forward," Nollen told Yahoo Finance, adding that this might affect WBD's subscriber numbers.
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This post was written by Angel Smith