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In response to
"the NBA isn't the NFL, I don't get the huge payout... -- nm"
by
Beaker 🍻
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The biggest challenge for WBD when it comes to the NBA is cable carriage fees.
Posted by
Mop🧹 (aka rburriel)
May 23 '24, 19:30
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There’s three possible channels on which WBD can show NBA games: TNT, TBS, and TruTV. Until recently, TruTV was basically a non-factor. TNT Sports has been pivoting TruTV into a “3rd leg” for their sports “stool”. Why is that important? Because if no one is watching a cable channel, it’s not like the cable channel just continues to exist, all happy go lucky. Cable companies first start offering lower carriage fees. Then they start removing the channel from their grid entirely and any ad revenue you may have been making on those channels evaporates.
For a company with numerous cable channels, a money losing streaming service, and a movie studio in an era of declining theatrical earnings, you need those cable channel carriage fees to keep propping up your bottom line. They’re a pretty steady and consistent revenue stream. If TNT/TBS/TruTV don’t have the NBA, they have NHL hockey and fuck all. Soon, Comcast and Charter and Cox start saying “You know how we used to pay you $3 for every subscriber on TNT and TBS? Now we’ll pay you $2. Also, we don’t want TruTV any more.”
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