David Zaslav, a.k.a. Rich Homie Zas, is out here doing his best impression of a guy who meant to trip on the sidewalk. You know the move—where you stumble but then try to act like you were just stretching or checking your shoe? That’s exactly what he’s doing with Warner Bros. Discovery’s loss of the NBA.
To be fair, Zaslav has done an impressive job cutting costs, paying down debt, and setting WBD up for a potential spinoff. That part of the playbook makes sense. But this idea that dumping the NBA was some strategic 4D chess move? Please.
The NBC Problem WBD Didn’t See Coming
For the longest time, everyone assumed the NBA’s media rights negotiations would come down to a predictable game of musical chairs. ESPN would keep a package, WBD would keep TNT’s long-standing relationship with the league, and Amazon would swoop in for a new slice of the pie.
But NBCUniversal was waiting in the shadows.
That’s the part I don’t think WBD accounted for. Zaslav and company likely figured they could slow-play negotiations, drive a hard bargain, and maybe even use the matching rights clause in their contract to squeeze out a better deal. But they didn’t anticipate that NBC would crash the party with a legitimate, aggressive bid—one that Adam Silver and the NBA clearly preferred.
And suddenly, WBD went from being a longtime NBA partner to a company on the outside looking in. Or, to put it another way, WBD just got Roundball Rocked.
Skip’s Take: The Spin Machine Kicks Into Overdrive
Now, instead of admitting they miscalculated, WBD is spinning the loss as a win. And I would be, too. When you take an L this big, you don’t just own it—you rebrand it.
Zaslav took the stage at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, & Telecom Conference and proudly declared:
“It turns out not doing the NBA was a great decision for us.”
Come on. If that were true, WBD wouldn’t have sued the NBA last summer in a last-ditch effort to claw back its rights. They wouldn’t have fought tooth and nail behind the scenes to keep the package. And they definitely wouldn’t have settled for NBA highlights and a licensing deal to send Inside the NBA over to ESPN.
Zaslav isn’t executing some grand vision—he’s making the best of a bad situation.
But Does It Matter?
Here’s the crazy part: This whole thing might actually work for WBD in the short term.
- They shed a massive financial commitment.
- Their stock has been trending upward as they focus on cost-cutting.
- They secured a major carriage deal with Comcast despite losing the NBA.
From an investor’s standpoint, Zaslav is winning the perception game for now.
But the long-term risk is massive. WBD still needs to fill the void left by the NBA, and NASCAR and the College Football Playoff aren’t going to do it alone. Their linear networks still rely on live sports, and at some point, those same distributors will reassess whether they really need TNT and TBS at the same price without the NBA as a tentpole property.
So yeah, Rich Homie Zas is selling the hell out of this pivot, but I’m not buying it. He didn’t outsmart the game—he just lost a bidding war and is trying to convince everyone it was the plan all along.
Will WBD thrive without the NBA? Maybe. But let’s be real: If they could have kept those rights at the price they wanted, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.
