TNT Sports and the Mountain West Conference (MW) have entered into a multi-year agreement to broadcast a comprehensive lineup of live college football games exclusively on truTV and Max starting this season. This partnership will see truTV and Max airing 14 Mountain West college football games during the inaugural season, beginning with San José State hosting Sacramento State on Thursday, August 29, at 10 p.m. ET.
This agreement comes at a pivotal moment for Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), which is expanding its sports rights portfolio in response to the potential loss of its NBA basketball rights. As part of this strategic shift, WBD has also secured a deal to air some College Football Playoff games. Additionally, on June 27, TNT Sports and the Big East Conference announced a new six-year media rights agreement. This deal will feature over 65 regular-season Big East college basketball games airing across TNT, TBS, truTV, and Max, starting with the 2025-26 season.
The Mountain West deal significantly enhances truTV’s primetime programming block, which debuted earlier this year, and marks the return of college football to TNT Sports, which last televised games in 2006. As part of the agreement, truTV and Max will host four Saturday MW doubleheaders on September 7, 14, 21, and October 12, along with single games on October 5, 19, 26, and November 2.
“TNT Sports provides the Mountain West with a third national television partner to showcase the outstanding student-athletes across the league,” said MW Commissioner Gloria Nevarez. “TNT Sports has always been a leader in sports broadcasting, and adding one of the top conferences in the FBS to its lineup will certainly benefit MW and college football fans across the country.”
Raphael Poplock, senior vice president of acquisitions, business development, and partnerships at TNT Sports, expressed excitement about the partnership. “We are excited to partner with the Mountain West and bring these compelling college football games to truTV and Max,” he said. “With this agreement, we will further expand our live sports programming on truTV while creating additional exposure for the Mountain West and its student-athletes across our TNT Sports platforms.”
In addition to the Mountain West games, TNT Sports will also present two first-round College Football Playoff games during the 2024 and 2025 seasons. Starting with the 2026 season, TNT Sports will add two quarterfinal games each year through the 2028 season.
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The timing of this deal is particularly advantageous for WBD, which is leaning into live sports as a resilient form of entertainment amid a writers’ strike and a downturn in the overall advertising market. “Our strategy in many ways is very different from other players,” said Luis Silberwasser, chairman and CEO of WBD Sports. “We’re not into tonnage; we’re really about picking and having the most premium sports out there. Whether it’s on TNT or TBS, or truTV, it just creates a cultural moment. So when these games are happening in primetime, people come to us.”
The impact of WBD’s sports offerings is already evident in its financial performance. Despite a 14 percent year-over-year decline in TV advertising due to a soft ad market and declining ratings on entertainment and news programming, higher domestic sports advertising driven by the NCAA March Madness tournament partially offset these losses.
“In what’s been an otherwise rather lackluster ad market, sports is a bright spot,” said Jon Steinlauf, WBD’s chief U.S. advertising sales officer. “I think sports is the most important genre in all of ad-supported television. When we talk to advertisers, they’re saying sports is really where we’re gonna get the quick impact and the immediate reach and the live audience that’s really connected and engaged.”
WBD Sports has also focused on live studio shows, with “Inside the NBA” leading the pack. The long-running studio show, hosted by Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith, and Shaquille O’Neal, is among the most popular of its kind on TV. The company recently signed all the main hosts to new deals.
WBD Sports aims to create a similarly engaging atmosphere on its NHL and MLB studio shows. “We are not only focusing on satisfying the hardcore fan; we want to get the casual fan in. We want to get a more diverse audience,” Silberwasser said. “Some of the moments on ‘Inside the NBA’ become viral, not because they’re sports moments, but because they’re regular entertainment moments that are pretty cool. And they go outside of the sports world.”
However, securing premium sports rights remains crucial, especially with the NBA rights set to come up for renewal talks later this year. “The NBA is an extremely important property for us, and we are a very important partner for the NBA as well,” Silberwasser said. “We want to do a deal that is financially attractive for both us and them.”
WBD Sports’ golf brand, “The Match,” which pits athletes and celebrities against each other, is another example of the company’s innovative approach to sports broadcasting. The latest installment will feature Kansas City Chiefs stars Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce taking on the Golden State Warriors’ Steph Curry and Klay Thompson.
“2023 is still a tough year for the ad business, and it remains hard to predict. But when media buyers sit down inside the Theater at Madison Square Garden on May 17, they should be prepared for plenty of crowing about the live sports they’ll be able to buy into,” Steinlauf said. “It’s incumbent upon us to present this audience and these brands in the most powerful way possible to the advertiser, and that’s what our plan is for this upfront.”
Source: TV Tech, Broadcasting & Cable, Multichannel News
