Warner Bros. Discovery is adding the U.S. rights to the French Open to its sports portfolio beginning in 2025 as part of a new 10-year agreement.
The tennis tournament, which is also known as Roland-Garros, will air nearly 900 live matches across TNT, TBS, TruTV and Max. In-depth highlights, behind-the-scenes and ancillary content will also air across TNT, TBS, truTV, Max, Bleacher Report, House of Highlights and HighlightHER. Currently, the French Open airs live on NBC Sports and Peacock.
The agreement, which is valued at $650 million according to the Athletic, now makes WBD the largest global broadcast partner or Roland Garros, building on a long-standing relationship with Eurosport dating back to 1989, which distributes the event to 55 countries outside the U.S.
“Roland-Garros perfectly aligns with our global sports strategy and our commitment to adding premium live sports content to our TNT Sports portfolio,” TNT Sports chairman and CEO Luis Silberwasser said in a statement. “We look forward to serving fans with a best-in-class content experience and providing them with direct access to more live Roland-Garros coverage than ever before.”
French Tennis Federation president Gilles Moretton added that the agreement would enable the organization to “ensure maximum exposure for Roland-Garros in the USA and help further promote the tournament.”
“With this long-term agreement, we aim to win over new fans in this key territory for the FFT,” Moretton added.
TNT Sports will have an on-site presence, including studio and announcing teams from multiple positions inside Roland-Garros throughout the competition. Additional details on TNT Sports’ Roland-Garros coverage in the U.S. will be announced in the lead up to the inaugural campaign.
The French Open deal comes as Warner Bros. Discovery has had some discussions with the NBA for a fourth package of games, an individual familiar with the matter told TheWrap. If those talks are unsuccessful, WBD could also try to enforce its matching rights.
Without the NBA, WBD could look to sublicense more sports, similar to the recent agreement it struck with ESPN for College Football Playoff games, or it could bid for other sports rights that come up for renewal, such as the UFC.
In addition to the NBA, Warner currently has rights to NASCAR, the National Hockey League, Major League Baseball and the March Madness college basketball tournament. It is also currently in exclusive negotiations with All Elite Wrestling.
The NBA is currently closing in on deals with NBC, Amazon and Disney that could see them score $76 billion in media revenue over 11 years, The Wall Street Journal reported.
NBCUniversal is expected to pay the NBA an average of $2.5 billion a year to show around 100 games per season – half of which would air exclusively on Peacock, an individual familiar with the terms confirmed to TheWrap. The games would air on NBC on Tuesdays and select Sundays to avoid conflicting with the network’s “Sunday Night Football” schedule.
The Journal reports that Amazon would pay $1.8 billion for regular season and playoff games, the new NBA in-season tournament and “play-in” games where teams compete for the final playoff spots. The tech giant would also be given a share of the conference finals, which the media partners would split in a rotation. Meanwhile, Disney would reportedly pay about $2.6 billion per year to continue to air the NBA Finals, up from its current $1.5 billion. The company would get fewer games than its current deal and ESPN would air games on its upcoming direct-to-consumer service slated to launch in 2025.
The deals, which would also include rights to WNBA telecasts, would go into effect after the 2024-25 season. The new agreements could translate to a 2.5 times increase in annual fees for the NBA to an average of nearly $7 billion, according to The Journal.
Representatives for NBC, Amazon, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery declined to comment. The NBA did not immediately return TheWrap’s request for comment.
