• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, Yesterday

Forget for a moment Paramount Skydance's major focus on Warner Bros. movie and film studios and HBO Max as major reasons for making a now hostile offer to buy Warner Bros. Discovery.

Should we factor in existing and potential future sports TV content as well?

WBD’s TNT Sports is still a significant -- but now smaller -- operation for sports TV and streaming content.

In July 2024, TNT lost a major sports TV franchise with the NBA -- which could be a major misstep by WBD CEO David Zaslav, according to some analysts.

In that month, the league made new 11-year agreements with ABC/ESPN, NBC/Peacock and Amazon Prime Video.

However, TNT still has a significant sports TV advertising moneymaker -- the three-week NCAA "March Madness" men’s college basketball tournament.

Conveniently, this TV package has been working hand and hand for many years with Paramount’s own CBS Television Network. Is there anything to build on here?

Looking down the road, WBD announced its plans in August 2025 to start a new TNT Sports stand-alone streaming service -- part of WBD’s still-planned efforts to split the company into two stock market publicly traded companies.

Potentially, this platform would include existing TNT Sports deals. It has NHL hockey, the Big 12 College basketball and football, Major League Baseball, and other sports content.

Looking back for a moment, think how much more powerful a possible WBD deal could have been for Paramount if WBD could have struck another long-term content deal with the NBA. Perhaps all is not lost.

What if TNT Sports could grow again and do for CBS what ESPN has done for ABC? Over the last few seasons, for example, ESPN has been a major brand and production promoter for ABC.

ESPN now shares its big NFL “Monday Night Football” telecast regularly in simulcasts with ABC. ABC also grabs exclusive airings.

In addition, ESPN has a new regular-season NBA deal, with ABC again airing NBA Finals series.

To be fair, there is a flip side to this. WBD is not favorable to any Paramount offer, specifically because of its recent wild dealing, according to reports, which have resulted in some $7.7 billion for UFC U.S. media rights, well above the previous UFC deal.

Still, with some leverage of CBS sports content -- the NFL, NCAA March Madness, Big Ten College Basketball, PGA Golf, The Masters, auto racing, and soccer -- is there a different kind of WBD merger deal programming to make?