Why Warner Bros. Discovery Halted Plans for Premium Sports Programming

Published: February 28, 2025

Photo from Bolivia Inteligente via Unsplash

Why Warner Bros. Discovery Halted Plans for Premium Sports Programming

By Movieguide® Contributor

Warner Bros. Discovery has canceled plans to launch a premium sports programming tier, keeping sports and news content available to standard and premium subscribers.

“Over the last year plus, we had the opportunity to assess how users engage with sports and news on Max, and we’ve been actively involved in exploring ways to evolve the sports distribution ecosystem in the U.S,” JB Perrette, the CEO and President of Global Streaming and Games, WBD, said in a statement.

Perrette continued, “We believe that the best place for that content for now is within the Standard and Premium tiers. This update ensures that subscribers can continue to enjoy that coveted access within Max, while also enabling ongoing investment in our premium sports and news portfolio.”

The initial paid plan was set to “start charging subscribers an additional $10 in February but announced in January that would be delayed by a few months due to the tech integration process,” according to Deadline, but WBD ultimately dropped it this month.

This may be due to the fact that WBD is losing access to the live game telecasts from the NBA, which would mean that a sports add-on tier would have “significantly less appeal” for subscribers, per Variety.

However, Max will be pulling sports and news content from subscribers who pay for the ad-supported tier package. Beginning March 30, the B/R Sports and CNN Max programming will not be available for those customers.

CNN might be considering a jump to a different streaming service soon — its own.

Last month, CNN chief Mark Thompson shared plans for a streaming platform for the cable news network, writing in a memo that it would be “a new way for digital subscribers at home and abroad to stream news programming from us on any device they choose.”

“It’s early days but we’ve already established that there’s immense demand for it not just in America, but across much of the world,” he added.

This comes after the disastrous launch of CNN+ in 2022. The service was shuttered after just one month.