’Wonder if sports channels only showing cricket make any money’

Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) is building a sports network without relying on marquee cricketing events, as it aims to reach a wider audience and avoid the high cost and commoditization associated with major cricket leagues.

It has announced a three-year agreement with MotoGP until 2026 with Dorna Sports, the exclusive media rights holder of the event globally, and offers a variety of sports content like boxing, wrestling, and badminton in its bid to carve an identity that is distinct from channels that mainly broadcast cricket.

The American media and entertainment company will continue to focus on niche sports through its Eurosport channel, even as it diversifies sports content beyond the select cricket events that its broadcasts, Arjun Nohwar, managing director, South Asia, Warner Bros. Discovery, told Mint in an interview.

The channel launched in India in 2017, and is a linear sports channel, or one that is not available digitally on an over-the-top (OTT) platform for live sports.

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"Our goal in broadcasting sports is to reach a larger audience and airing cricket will make us just another channel with a similar, copycat identity. Oftentimes, this is what happens and a particular property eclipses the broadcaster's brand or who they are. Then, the channel showing cricket becomes just a commodity and people are only coming to watch that series. If every broadcaster has to play the same game of just showing cricket, there will be no emergence of any other sport here. We want the channel to stand for something that fans want. Someone has to take a mantle to do that," he said.

Currently, Warner Bros has the Afghan Cricket Board and the Bangladesh Premier League slates, and does not have any other important cricketing event. Nohwar also wondered whether channels broadcasting only cricket were actually making money.

"It sometimes baffles me how other channels that only show cricket, considering the cost of the rights, whether they're actually making much money. We are very conscious of profitable growth and our bottom line, and we're happy. We are seeing success in the channel and its viewership and growth. We are investing in more and more rights constantly," he added.

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The channel seeks to create digital content through other distribution platforms such as Jio Cinema, making quick clips and video-on-demand to reach audiences beyond traditional television broadcasts. While financial details of the agreements with leagues or sporting property owners remain undisclosed, he said the company is focused on profitability in its sports portfolio.

Even Sony Sports Network, which lost the rights to the big-ticket cricket property IPL, and couldn't acquire any future media rights for major BCCI or ICC events, has managed to run a “profitable” sports business on the back of wrestling event, WWE, and some cricketing events, including England, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, and New Zealand. Sony Sports also has rights to the UEFA Euro, the US Open and the French Open.

The channel was launched in India as DSport in partnership between Discovery India and Lex Sportel. But later, in 2020, Lex parted ways with Discovery, and set up its own channel, 1Sports. In time, Nohwar expects some of the properties the channel has—even though they are still new sports—to become resilient properties in time. The aim is clear—to go beyond cricket and create a new set of fans to consume this content, but without a timeline in mind.

The channel has a line-up of boxing events, TNA wrestling and motorsports, MotoGP and NASCAR racing. It also has the Yonex India Open in badminton. It has golf too.

"We keep looking at where it is that we want to make our investments. MotoGP is a franchise we wanted to reclaim and we are very happy about getting it back," he added.

While it doesn't have a dedicated sports OTT platform, the company isn't just looking at access to viewers through television but also digital transmission through their own and other apps in the form of quick clips, after the sporting event is over where it is getting access to viewers. Viewing is happening across different times of the day after the event and that becomes a big opportunity. Video-on-demand is an opportunity for the company on Eurosport, as not everything the channel broadcasts is live anyway. So, it goes on a video feed after the event is over. Eurosport, the company's sports channel in Europe, is broadcasting the Paris Olympics, and will broadcast 3,800 hours of content across over 60 feeds.

"It is difficult to talk to the big cricket leagues at this point because the company’s thesis is not in that direction. But this could change in the future if the math works out. We want to make sure that we do things responsibly. Right now, that's one part of a thesis to go after significantly large franchises," he added. The company will focus on the option of watching wrestling, cycling, boxing, soccer, and badminton as well as some form of cricket. But cricket, while it is part of the offerings, will not be front and centre.

A minuscule proportion of audiences watch non-cricketing sports in India, with more than 60% of sports viewers watching cricket, he said. "But there is a signal and we are acting on it to make requisite investments in other sporting properties. It isn't to say that every sport that we put out gets consumed a lot, but it's really heartening to see wrestling, soccer and tennis, are seeing a lot of consumption on our platform," he said. A large part of the consumption in niche sports is happening in the metros and tier-1 cities. Wrestling, perhaps, is an exception, as the consumption goes beyond tier-1 cities and is the second-most watched sport in the country, Nohwar said.

HBO Max's new identity

WBD Global, which also owns HBO Max recently rebranded the streaming platform as Max. The service began in the US in 2023, and later Latin America and Europe in 2024. Along with the name change, it also added more Discovery content to its services there.

In 2023, the company also sold its slate of Max content to Viacom18's OTT platform Jio to stream its popular HBO Originals for about ₹1,000 crore in a three-year deal. So, in a way, it cannot bring its own brand Max to India for three years. He said that was a conscious call as an organization.

"I wouldn't say it 'scuttled' our plans to be here. We traded off launching Max in India, because there was a global rollout schedule we were part of. We want to be launching Southeast Asia by the end of the year and we wanted to make sure that in the interim, our content was available to its maximum potential. Jio was the best platform to partner with, just given its reach and the ambitious plans, they had to get this across the country and data content managers. And they are really happy with the partnership," he added.