Warner Bros. Discovery has retained Charles Barkley beyond next year, even though it is likely to lose the NBA broadcast rights. Aside from Barkley appearing as a field correspondent for everything from the MLB postseason to Mountain West football games, WBD seems to be entertaining the idea of a sports variety show with a similar format to Insights into the NBA that goes beyond the parquet and encompasses every corner of the sporting world.
While Inside Sports sounds fun in theory, but WBD will have a hard time creating a show that attracts the same audience as Insights into the NBA and justifies exorbitant salaries for Barkley and his co-hosts.
As a refresher, WBD still has an extensive portfolio of sports rights that it can pounce on Barkley and Co.:
Outside of a dry period in late summer and early autumn, WBD has enough to Inside Guys are busy. And while the company is negotiating with the NBA in a court case that is expected to last into the fall, it could probably strike a deal for highlight and film rights. An hour-long show covering all of these sports and other big topics would be quite entertaining.
But the fundamental problem with Inside Sports is that there would be no NBA. As a pre- and post-game show, Insights into the NBA draws millions of viewers, making it often the most watched non-sports game on weekday television. For comparison: Scott Van Pelt’s midnight game SportsCenter rarely hits 1 million – and even then, there’s often a game as the opening act. It just doesn’t seem like many people tune in.
But television is not the only medium that interests WBD. As the company tries to expand its Max streaming service and has to manage its sports brand Bleacher Report in addition to its digital and social video channels, Inside has considerable value there. Although it is organized by a group of guys in their 50s and 60s, Inside remains one of the more viral shows on television. Many of its classic moments had nothing to do with basketball. Putting Barkley together with Shaquille O’Neal, Kenny Smith and Ernie Johnson will certainly make for some good content.
Is there a world in which Inside becomes a brand beyond a show? A live broadcast at AEW Everything included or Ohio State against Texas in a CFP opener could work. Shoulder programming like Insights into the NBA is always a part of marketing, why not just turn the knob up a little and have Inside Sports be a marketing tool for the entire TNT library?
A final possibility could be that WBD merges Inside with Barkley’s short-lived CNN show King Charles. WBD could let O’Neal and Smith go and turn around Inside into an even broader show. Barkley has been doing interviews on the news King Charlesthat was conceived under the old management, but the show was hidden away late on Wednesday nights and not widely promoted. Barkley and Johnson were able to competently chat with major figures in sports and politics in a format that could be broadcast on WBD’s sports and news platforms on television and online.
That’s the substantive calculation, but the financials are even harder to calculate. Anthony Crupi of Sportico recently reported that the NBA loss could wipe 7 percent off WBD’s EBITDA (or estimated cash profit). WBD’s ad revenues plunged 10 percent in the most recent quarter, a year after the NBA loss. The company just wrote down its TV assets by $9.1 billion.
Paying an expensive marketing icon like Barkley to do a show outside his field that still incurs significant overhead costs may not make sense for WBD much longer. Barkley was an NBA player! Letting talent do an offbeat passion project is something rich media companies do – and that is to say, not many these days.
Unless WBD can demonstrate that there is a way to pay off debt and recoup the revenue (advertising and transportation) lost by leaving the NBA, it makes no sense to pay an NBA legend $20 million a year to cover tennis and interview presidential candidates.
