Just learned that the head of Warner Media news and sports, Jeff Zucker, resigned today over his failure to disclose a consensual relationship during an internal investigation into misconduct of a former employee. As Warner Media is being sold to another corporation, there is going to be a major hole in the leadership of the company. Whoever is going to be the new head is going to, most likely, be charged by new ownership to look into the finances of the organization and see where cost savings can be made.

A lot of money has been put on the NBA and now the NHL. Will this continue under new ownership?

Why wouldn’t it?

Live sports are still valuable content especially for streaming services.

Last I knew, Warner wanted to transition some of their content to HBO Max.

If money becomes an issue, expect cutbacks on the pre-game and Post-Game shows.

It might be telling as to what happens at renewal time. The Turner NBA contract is up in 2025. If Warner is out, then I could see NBC/USA/Peacock getting involved. If Fox is still committed to FS1, they would probably be in play as well, although the lack of a Fox-branded streaming service is problematic (although I guess if more focus gets put in Fox Sports Go, then they might have a competitive option). Never rule out Amazon as well.

Turner's new parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, is going to want to keep all of their sports rights and move some of the content to the "Discovery+" streaming service, which will have to work really hard to get any traction in competition with other streaming services. Discovery+ won't be a threat to Netflix and the Disney bundle; they will be trying to compete on a second tier of streamers with Peacock and Paramount+.

The question relative to Turner's sports broadcast rights is, how much of that sports content will the sports leagues allow them to make exclusive to streaming. WBD might be willing to pay a premium to get some live games on a streaming exclusive to try and drive subscribers to Discovery+, but the sports leagues might not want too much of that.