Wokeness, sucking up to communist China and partisan politics come with a price, and the NBA is about to pay the piper. The NBA’s television contract with TNT expires in 2025, and the woke league may well be held accountable for turning off its fans, according to a Variety report.
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav says he won’t overpay for TNT to maintain broadcast rights with a league that is seriously suffering diminishing returns.
“We don’t have to have the NBA,” Zaslav said. “And if we do a new deal with the NBA, it’s gonna look a lot different. I’d like to do a deal with the NBA, but it has to be a deal for the future. It can’t be a deal for the past. … “Sports is hard. Yes. Especially sports of diminishing returns.”
Warner Brothers is paying the NBA $24 billion for its current contract, and the clueless league wants to triple that figure. This comes at a time when interest and TV viewership in the woke NBA are falling fast. Zaslav hinted that it could move NBA games to HBO Max in the future.
Outkick blogger Bobby Burack noted the obvious when he wrote “overpaying for a declining product in the NBA is hardly an advantageous business decision for Discovery.”
The NBA is in denial about its product and the related diminishing returns, but the fans who put the league in their rearview mirrors certainly aren’t. This league is a doormat for China and its atrocious human rights abominations. It favors Democrat politics, shills for Black Lives Matter and views America as a racist nation. The NBA also flies the LGBT flag. The NBA took a knee on the national anthem, and fans are taking a pass on the NBA.
Unsurprisingly, NBA television viewership is dropping like a rock. Only a fraction of the fans who watched the NBA Finals in yesteryear are watching today.
Last year, a Harris poll revealed that 57 percent of Republicans and 38 percent of respondents overall pointed to the NBA’s politics as the reason they tuned out. “The NBA and its players have made their political opinions well-known, which has led to many fans turning their back on the league,” wrote Kyle Matthews, of The American Reporter.
As the TV contract with Warner Bros. Discovery nears its end, the NBA of diminishing returns is deluded if it believes a woke brand is worthy of $72 billion in a new television contract. Good luck with that.
