With the Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery merger now complete, forming Skydance, many in the sports media world are watching and wondering what happens to the combined entity’s sports rights. Certainly, this seems like a good time to examine what the folks at Skydance Global Sports Group (now to be called SGSG forevermore) are, and likely have been, gaming. What are the hurdles and issues SGSG is looking at and will likely need to address in order to most efficiently deploy its expanded portfolio?
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— Austin Karp (@AustinKarp) September 21, 2026
No matter how you look at SGSG’s current rights, it is an amazing collection of domestic and international rights. Undoubtedly, it’s one of the top collections we have ever seen in sports television. I’d still give ESPN the nod for the best overall rights package because of its college football dominance and the significant chunk of NBA rights it owns. But there is no doubt that this is a top-tier portfolio, and over time, it could become even more valuable with a few well-intended moves.
The logical question might be: what to do with all of this product? But a better question at first is: what can you do with all of this product?
I’ve seen a number of stories suggesting a giant swap among the Skydance sports outlets. While some of that may happen on the margins, the major properties are unlikely to move from their existing homes anytime soon. So no, there won’t be any NFL on TNT, no CFP games on CBS, no Master’s on TBS, and no Big Ten games on truTV.
Whether we can move content around the SGSG chessboard depends on what each property’s “grant of rights” (GoR) language allows. In this case, the GoR mostly refers to how and where the content must be distributed. While GoR specifics matter, the ultimate driver will likely be which content is contractually tethered to carriage agreements that SGSG has entered into. CBS continues to receive reverse comp payments from local affiliates, retransmission consent payments from distributors, and subscription payments for its linear cable network portfolio.
For years, distributors have gained the right to carry additional sports programming in existing carriage agreements by agreeing to what were commonly called “surcharge” payments. These separate payments were attached to the newly acquired property and, over time, were usually absorbed into the network’s base rate.
Carriage agreements for networks with significant sports content became increasingly specific about which sports content the network would carry. If they fell below those product guarantees, distributors could/would seek license-fee reductions. That’s what happened when WBD famously lost NBA rights a few years back. (Who can forget WBD CEO David Zaslav’s famous 2022 quote: “We don’t have to have the NBA.”)
In a frantic effort to limit the fallout from losing the NBA, WBD began backfilling its sports content. WBD secured a College Football Playoff sublicense from ESPN, a Big 12 football and basketball sublicense, also from ESPN, a long-term deal for the French Open, and a package of Big East basketball games.
Now, given what WBD gave up and what it replaced it with, I can imagine there were spirited discussions with distributors about where the new carriage rate for TNT should have settled. WBD made a lot of fanfare about maintaining its existing TNT rates after losing the NBA. I don’t know if that actually happened, but I do know they gave up something somewhere in the renewals. For example, distributors may have been granted greater carriage flexibility for other WBD networks. Remember, these likely weren’t deals just for TNT, but rather “global” type deals that encompassed multiple WBD-owned networks. Somewhere, distributors extracted concessions in exchange for losing the NBA and their signature show, Inside the NBA.
So, what’s the immediate play for SGSG? I assume that, as part of due diligence, Skydance spent significant time on the specifics of the rights deals and carriage agreements. With that info, you can start modeling forward-looking strategies to slice, dice, and reallocate (or eliminate) content from your complement of properties. This whole process has to play out across Skydance’s distribution, finance, sports, and ad sales executives. Once that’s done, you move on to meetings with leagues and distributors.
The outcome of the distributor meetings will be interesting to watch. Skydance has highly competent distribution executives who have cut sports deals for years and understand the pressure points. But anytime you try to reset a business, you’ll have to deal with each distributor individually, and the incumbent “most favored nations” discussions in all distribution deals essentially require Skydance to match terms across all major distributors.
I don’t expect a wholesale culling of current properties. It’s possible there could be some chess with existing U.S. and international properties to improve overall distribution for certain events. For this merger to work, sports will have to carry a fair amount of the weight as both a growth engine and a cash engine. Growth will come from domestic and international expansion of whatever merged streaming service emerges from HBO Max and Paramount+. Equally important is the significant cash from the existing pay-TV ecosystem. Yes, that business is shrinking, but it remains a highly profitable and dependable cash generator, and Skydance needs cash!
As this plays out, I expect SGSG to pursue simple, relatively inexpensive changes that could happen sooner rather than later. Think more alternative telecasts of network content on cable networks, expanded pre- and post-game shows for major events, and more liberal sharing of sports “talent” across platforms.
Other low-hanging fruit opportunities are already emerging. Promos for TBS AL Divisional playoffs ran in the NFL Week 3 CBS game between Baltimore and Dallas. Expect this to ramp up, not only for sports, but also for cross-promos touting CBS, TNT, and TBS entertainment offerings. If it hasn’t already begun, expect “streaming bundles” featuring HBO Max and Paramount+ to get significant play.
For broader opportunities, I’m going to look at how they handle two properties where they own 100% of the U.S. rights: the UFC and the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championships. How they handle these properties will give us a sense of what might be possible going forward.
What about for sports properties seeking a new or improved home? Does the new SGSG combo foretell a bull market for rights deals? The rights market might want to temper those expectations. First up: MLB and NHL deals in 2028. Yes, there are some CFP discussions, but the earliest I see CBS venturing further into the college world (other than renewing its Big Ten deal before 2029-30) is a look at the Big 12 TV deal that expires after the 2030-31 school year. We all know about the impending NFL reopener after the 2029-30 season. Until then, I don’t see any network making huge moves that might limit their ability to deal with the NFL. As I’ve said for years, the top-tier properties will get paid; everybody else needs to get creative or expect significantly tempered increases.
Let’s talk about the downside of this merger. Many jobs will be lost. Both the sports divisions of CBS/Paramount and WBD/TNT Sports will get hit. That is always the unfortunate byproduct of these unions, but for both to survive and thrive in this new world, the combined organization will have to cut costs. Skydance executives are targeting at least $6 billion in annual operating cost savings by 2028. Some of that will come from job eliminations, and some will likely come from letting certain underperforming rights agreements expire.
I give the Skydance folks a lot of credit for pulling this deal off. I look forward to giving them even more credit for making the deal work over the long haul.
Bob entered the television business in 1981, when he sold his first cable subscriptions to a nice lady in Aloha, Oregon. In 1989, he moved to the programming side with Liberty Sports’ RSN group. Liberty Sports was later sold to Fox, where he rose to President of Fox Sports Networks and Fox Sports International. He stepped down from full-time work at Fox Sports in 2009 but remained an advisor through 2015. He continues to work in the industry through his company, Thompson Sports Group LLC.
Source: awfulannouncing.com
