By Landon Pertuset
Oct. 7, 2025
TNT Sports is pivoting its sports media blueprint after losing NBA broadcasting rights, TNT Senior Interactive Producer Jordan Smith revealed Wednesday in a press conference.
“We have shifted focus, and we're trying to grow in areas like House of Highlights or Bleacher Report,” said Smith.
The social sites will change the way they shape their content, as Smith said the way audiences view content has changed.
“Bleacher Report just relaunch their app earlier this year, so they have shifted their focus to being a lot more vertically video inclined,” Smith said. “TikTok really changed the way the industry operates.”
This remodel follows a series of changes for TNT, as Smith said the company has lost coverage of a league they have covered for over three decades.
“As a part of us losing NBA rights, there was a big lawsuit between TNT Sports, ESPN, and the NBA,” Smith said.
On July 25, 2024, the NBA announced an 11-year agreement with the Walt Disney Co., Amazon and NBC worth approximately $76 billion, with streaming rights beginning in 2025 and ending in 2036.
After the agreement between the media outlets and the NBA, The Wall Street Journal reported that TNT’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, would sue the NBA.
WBD announced the lawsuit after the NBA failed to allow the company to use its matching clause within their contract. The clause would have allowed TNT to continue to broadcast NBA games for the 2025–26 season.
Months later, a settlement was announced between the NBA and WBD, allowing TNT to continue using NBA media within their social sites. The Wall Street Journal expects the deal to amount to $315 million for TNT’s House of Highlights coverage of the league.
“We have found our way into more FBS coverage,” Smith said. “One of the things in that settlement was we would get to keep producing Inside the NBA. It would air on ESPN or ABC, and ESPN would give us the rights to certain Big 12 games. So that was our path into FBS TV rights.”
“We also licensed College Football Playoff rides from ESPN, so we were able to get something with a massive audience and something with the sizable audience, and that started last year,” Smith said.
In May 2024, TNT and ESPN announced that TNT would broadcast a select number of College Football Playoff games. The Wall Street Journal reported that the agreement came from a deal in which WBD and the Walt Disney Co. would merge some of their streaming sites.
About the Author
Landon Pertuset is a senior sports media major at the University of South Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communications. He is a 2026 recipient of the David J. Morrow Scholarship for Business Journalism.