Warner Bros Discovery and its sports division, Turner Broadcasting System, filed a lawsuit on Friday against the National Basketball Association in New York over the league's rejection of its matching bid for media rights.
It's unclear if merger deregulation will jumpstart consolidation among larger media companies. In the last five years, every large media merger has led to tens of billions in lost value for shareholders.
The NBA said Wednesday that it is not accepting Warner Bros. Discovery's $1.8 billion per year offer to continue its longtime relationship with the league and therefore has entered into a deal with Amazon Prime Video, a move that would mean this coming season would end a nearly four-decade run of games being on TNT.
The NBA on Wednesday rejected an offer from Warner's TNT sports division — ending four decades of partnership.
Warner Bros. Discovery (NASDAQ: WBD ) stock is taking a beating on Thursday after the NBA rejected a deal to continue its rights agreement with the media company.
Warner Bros Discovery shares fell more than 4% in U.S. premarket trading on Thursday, after the media giant failed to renew broadcasting rights for the NBA games, fueling investor concerns over the future of its TNT and Max streaming service.
Warner Bros Discovery may have been late to the game, but the TNT owner isn't about to let Amazon Prime Video snatch its NBA ball without a fight.
The NBA is negotiating a new media rights deals to begin after this upcoming season. Warner Bros.
Zacks.com users have recently been watching Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) quite a bit.
Warner Bros Discovery Inc (NASDAQ:WBD, ETR:J5A) TNT network said it has matched rivals offers for NBA basketball games to avoid losing one of its most lucrative sports content deals. NBA games on TNT have been shown since 1989, with its current rights deal costing $1.20 billion annually and ending at the end of the next season.
Bank of America Analysts suggest Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. should break up the company, separating the legacy assets from the higher growth ones. Such a break-up would be bad for shareholders long-term, given the difficulty in selling off those assets in the current environment, and their strong cash flow generation. There is a lot of overreaction to WBD's underperformance, but the merger's strategic rationale remains intact.
Warner Bros. Discovery WBD, -1.38% informed the league Monday that it will match the $1.8 billion per year offer by Amazon's Prime Video.