WBD - Comcast: Lurking Hidden Risks And The NBA Deal Makes It Worse

2024-05-30 13:51:16 ET

Summary

• Comcast's NBCUniversal is reportedly close to securing the NBA rights it lost in 2002, potentially tripling the fees charged by Warner Brothers Discovery.
• The deal has potential for massive losses in a streaming-only world and the decline of the linear bundle, but will make money if linear bundle holds.
• It's the latest of several NBCUniversal sports deals with an exceptionally wide profit range, as much as $2 billion in profits on linear, and potentially the same amount in losses.
• Comcast's other divisions continue to perform strongly, although broadband remains pressured by fixed wireless.

Well, I still can’t believe it, but it’s true nonetheless; the NBA will shortly be (nearly) tripling its annual rights fees .

The even more amazing thing is, that isn’t even the real headline; from the beginning, the NBA has been seeking nothing less than a tripling of its rights fees, and for a very long time the consensus among analysts was that the NBA would get it or something close to it. And now it has, by both doubling the per-deal fee it charges and by adding a third partner to the two it already has....

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