Is the Great Live Sports Bet Paying Off?

Forget the three-game NBA parlays and slamming the over for Jahmyr Gibbs’ total yards. The biggest wagers in the world of sports haven’t been placed on game performance via FanDuel or DraftKings, but broadcast rights, in the form of massive deals by media companies.

But has the massive bet on live sports, thought to be one of the few reliable routes to attracting mass amounts of eyeballs in our fractured media space, paid off? In the media, as in sports, there have been winners and there have been losers.

Sports Media Musical Chairs

According to a report published in November by media research group Ampere Analysis, global sports-media spending is on track to reach $78 billion by 2030, a 20% increase from 2025’s levels. Nearly half of the increase comes from the MLB’s new rights deal in November, which expanded coverage to NBC/Peacock and Netflix, and the NBA’s 11-year megadeal. Renewing a partnership with ESPN/ABC while placing longtime partner Warner Bros. Discovery’s TNT on the bench in favor of NBC/Peacock and Amazon Prime, the NBA deal officially kicked off this season. 

For WBD and the NBA, all’s well that ends well:

• NBA ratings climbed roughly 30% in the first month of the season this year, with national games drawing the most views in 15 years. The deal massively expanded the amount of games on broadcast networks, while tapping an Amazon Prime user base that now vastly outnumbers cable subscribers in the US.
• WBD, meanwhile, responded to the loss of the NBA by scooping up a decade of The French Open, which proved a ratings bonanza in its first year in May, as well as a slate of major college football games, the second-most watched sport in the US by far. Earlier this month, the company said it struck a deal to sublicense a group of College Football Playoff games previously scheduled for ESPN.

Football Night in America: Still, not every deal has been a clear winner. David Ellison’s new-look Paramount-SkyDance paid $7.7 billion to poach the UFC from ESPN this year. But in a recent filing urging shareholders to reject Paramount’s takeover bid, WBD flagged the price as “above-market” and added that the company could face further pressure if and when the NFL exercises its right to renegotiate a broadcast deal early. Such a maneuver by the top sports league is expected to break the bank for media companies. Just look at Disney: To secure a suite of tertiary NFL media properties this year, the company ceded a full 10% stake in ESPN to the league.