The sports broadcaster, created by combining BT and WBD’s UK and Irish sports channel businesses, saw losses soar in the past year.
- Cost of retaining lucrative sports rights and rebranding mounts up
- Subscribers could face more pain
TNT Sports saw losses increase to £148,843,000, according to the broadcaster’s latest financial reports covering the year up to 31st July 2024. That’s up from a loss of £34,074,000 reported a year earlier, when the broadcaster was in the middle of rebranding from BT Sport to TNT Sports.
The financial results cover a 12 month period that saw TNT Sports secure the rights to continue showing live Premier League between 2025 and 2028. It also won the rights to show live FA Cup games from next season. The broadcaster also undertook a comprehensive marketing campaign to promote its new branding.
The mounting losses could however be bad news for subscribers.
Pay more for TNT Sports?
The losses indicate possible pain for subscribers ahead, as BT and WBD seek a return on their investments.
Subscribers to TNT Sports (and BT Sport before 2023) have repeatedly seen above inflation price rises. This year, TNT Sports asked cycling, athletic and snooker fans to pay more when it removed Eurosport from TV platforms in February. That forced fans into paying for a full TNT Sports subscription to continue watching their favourite sports. Eurosport was previously offered as a non-premium sports channel. It was often bundled into more basic subscription packages alongside entertainment channels.
TNT Sports doesn’t have a direct contractual relationship with viewers. Instead, it has deals with pay TV platform operators including Sky and EE and with WBD for carriage on Discovery+. As a result, it may seek more money per subscriber from operators, with rises then passed down to viewers.
What happens next?
TNT Sports has emerged as the biggest threat to Sky’s dominance of pay TV and streaming sports since the Premier League began to split packages of games between broadcasters.
The broadcaster is currently operated as a joint venture between BT and Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), with an option for WBD to take full control of the business.
Late last year, WBD’s shares in the business were transferred from Discovery Corporate Services Limited to DNI Foreign Holdings Limited. This occurred weeks after Discovery Corporate Services opted not to exercise an option to become 100% owner in TNT Sports.
DNI Foreign Holdings Limited has a further call option to become a 100% owner of TNT Sports Broadcasting on 1st September 2026 “at the then fair market value plus the net present value of the normalised remaining expected earnout BT PLC would have received in the following 2 years”, according to TNT Sports.
Reports suggest BT wants to exit venture
Media reports from earlier this year indicate BT remains interested in offloading its share of the business. Should WBD be interested, the two companies may make an earlier announcement.
Having spent the best part of a decade trying to build a pay TV service to rival Sky, fully exiting TNT Sports would enable BT to focus on its current priorities relating to fibre broadband rollout and building its business-focused telecom service. It would also release BT from the burden of the ever increasing cost of live sport.
By: Marc Thornham | Image: TNT Sports | Updated: 23:06