The Big Lead

TNT Sports CEO breaks silence on adding ESPN's expiring MLB properties

By J.P. Hoornstra

Mar 7, 2024; Denver, Colorado, USA; Detailed view of a TNT Sports courtside broadcast camera before the game between the Boston Celtics against the Denver Nuggets at Ball Arena.
Mar 7, 2024; Denver, Colorado, USA; Detailed view of a TNT Sports courtside broadcast camera before the game between the Boston Celtics against the Denver Nuggets at Ball Arena. / Ron Chenoy-Imagn Images
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TNT Sports has pursued an interesting media-rights strategy in the wake of its losing the rights to live NBA games beginning next season.

Between its contracts in baseball, tennis (French Open), motor sports (NASCAR), women's basketball (Unrivaled), basketball (March Madness and, for this season, the NBA), soccer and wrestling, the network has its finger in many live sports.

Now, with ESPN opting out of its contract with MLB — a rights portfolio that included the Home Run Derby, wild card round, and Sunday Night Baseball — the potential exists for TNT to add more.

Not so fast, said Luis Silberwasser, the CEO of TNT Sports.

"It's all about timing," he told Puck's John Ourand on the latest episode of The Varsity podcast. "We've navigated our distribution deals in a really, really good way. It is hard for us to see that we could acquire those rights and get any media monetization on those rights right now, given the fact that our distribution deals are locked in a pretty good way. It's hard to think about, like, how are we going to financially justify those investments at this moment in time?

"We love baseball, absolutely, and we look forward to continuing to have the postseason," Silberwasser continued. "We look forward to understanding better, what's the league's thinking regarding the new world after '28. But we're happy with what we have. Baseball was one of my first loves when I grew up in New York early on. There's nothing like postseason baseball, it's a fantastic event. ... We're happy with what we have and we're always talking to them about opportunities, but I think the timing is a little bit tricky on this side, for us, given the fact that we're locked on our distribution deals."

Althought TNT Sports is a linear-first organization, Silberwasser would go on to say that its Max streaming platform could become the exclusive home to certain properties in the future. That might necessarily exclude regular-season and postseason baseball games, whose audience skews older relative to the other major North American pro sports.

But the Home Run Derby, a one-off event each July that doesn't demand the same attention span as a nine-inning game, poses an intriguing fit — if TNT Sports is interested.

"As streaming grows and as Max grows, we know the audience will move more toward the streaming world and that will take a bigger importance in the ecosystem, but right now we're trying to balance both things," Silberwasser said. "There may be sports in the future that we acquire that we want to figure out and try to see, maybe it's an exclusive to Max. What does that do for Max? We benefit from the experience today of having a year of watching the consumption patterns on sports when it's available on both platforms. ... Most of the audience continues to be on the linear side."

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