Amid intrigue swirling over its future role as an NBA broadcaster, Warner Bros. Discovery's Turner Sports has acquired U.S. rights to the French Open tennis tournament.
The annual late spring major, whose 2024 tournament concludes this weekend in Paris, is set to air on WBD's linear network and Max streaming flagship from 2025. The rights deal runs for 10 years. A person familiar with the deal confirmed the details to Deadline.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
NBCUniversal (NBC and Peacock) and Tennis Channel currently broadcast French Open action in the United States, and Eurosport on WBD has broadcast it in many international territories for many years.
variety The first reports of the deal came out.
Tennis in the United States is primarily covered by ESPN, with the other three Grand Slams (Wimbledon, the U.S. Open and the Australian Open) broadcast on Disney's broadcast network.
Max has begun charging premium fees for its sports division and is also considering joining Venu, a joint venture with Fox and Disney, and the French Open would add another asset to the menu.
The tennis deal is ESPN's second high-profile rights deal in recent weeks, following a sublicensing deal for College Football Playoff matches that began this season. The playoffs, which previously featured only four teams, expanded to 12 teams this year, and the expanded field has allowed ESPN to sell early round matches while retaining the later rounds.
The NBA's broadcast rights, which will transition after the 2024-25 season, have attracted strong interest from many players, both new and old, providing the latest evidence of the value of sports rights in a disrupted television ecosystem. Disney/ESPN, Amazon and NBCUniversal have all secured a share of the highly-watched league, according to multiple reports in recent weeks. With dozens of games airing each year on Prime Video and Peacock, the league is expected to be the latest to make the move to exclusive streaming. With the NBA Finals underway, final details regarding media rights are unlikely to be announced for at least the next week or two. The league and bidders have not commented during the negotiation process.
The total NBA rights bill, including the WNBA, is expected to exceed NBA Commissioner Adam Silver's original target of $75 billion, more than double the value of the current contract. Turner, which has aired the NBA since the mid-1980s, has been described as a bystander, but as the current rights holder it is said to have the right to match any other bid. The company also operates NBA.com and NBA TV for the NBA, which is widely seen as a plus. Charles Barkley, one of the hosts of the popular TNT studio show, said: Behind the scenes of the NBAIn a series of interviews in recent weeks, he slammed WBD executives as “clowns” who had “botched the rights negotiations.”
