Storied sports channel Eurosport will disappear from British screens next month as Warner Bros. Discovery rejigs its sports portfolio. Live sports and other programming from Eurosport will move to the TNT channels, which are operated as a joint venture between WBD and UK telco BT.
Eurosport majors in cycling, tennis, winter and fight sports – coverage of which will port to TNT. The combined offering will continue to also be available on the Discovery+ streaming service.
The move to consolidate the sports offering under the TNT brand was flagged when WBD and BT hammered out their JV. It is the end of a sports era given Eurosport has been available in the UK for 35 years. The changes kick in at the end of February.
WBD top brass told Deadline that Eurosport disappearing from EPGs in the UK was country-specific and there are no plans to lose the brand elsewhere in Europe.
Discovery bought Eurosport in 2015 before the merger with Warner Media to create WBD in 2022. WBD and BT Group combined their sports businesses later that year to create TNT Sports. The BT Sport channels were rebadged with TNT branding the following year.
“In July 2023 we launched TNT Sports in the UK, which is a rebrand of BT Sport, and we amplified the thinking about what should a sports business be here in the UK,” Scott Young, Group SVP, Content, Production & Business Operations, WBD Sports Europe, told Deadline. “It was a very rare opportunity to reimagine a successful sports business into one that is a bit more modern, a bit more connected to fans, and with a rights portfolio that we knew would expand through this second phase of the journey.”
TNT Sports, WBD
The TNT channels have a raft of top-tier soccer and sports rights including matches from the coveted English Premier League and the blue riband UEFA Champions League tournament. The combined portfolio will span coverage of the Olympic Games, cycling, tennis, snooker, rugby, boxing and mixed martial arts among others.
“We know customers like to find a single destination for the sports they love,” Young continued. “Part of the timing was driven by distribution agreements, but most of it was just timed on firstly landing TNT Sports correctly and successfully. We have got ourselves a point where TNT Sports is in a good space and we’re now ready to migrate the content from Eurosport in this market.”
Warner Bros. Discovery Sports will continue to handle production after the rejig. The production teams and headcount will be unaffected, changes having already been made soon after the WBD-BT Sport deal kicked in and production was moved to facilities in Chiswick and Stockley Park, London.
With a wider portfolio, the on-air team will cross-promote different sports, Young said. “It gives us the ability for us to go from a live major event, say the Premier League, and connect that into, for example, a stage of a cycling event that’s either underway or about to start. This live-to-live [broadcasting] strategy, will have the on-air team talking to each other and actually connecting.”
In linear TV, the combined offering will play across TNT’s existing four channels – with more content deployed across overflow channels when there are big sports events underway.
Free TV coverage and highlights will play on WBD’s free-to-air Quest channel. The company said it will have an expanded selection of sports programming, documentaries and live sport on Quest.