>>15556789Cable providers (Comcast, U-Verse, DirecTV, etc) pay per-subscriber for channels like ESPN, TNT, Disney, Comedy Central and so on. The more desirable the programming on the channels, the higher rate they can command. ESPN gets a shitfuckton of money because live major sports are a draw; channels like The Fishing Channel get almost nothing because who cares. Rough estimates range from $0.25/subscriber to $5.00 or more. That's why "basic" cable packages will have every major cable channel except sports; deluxe cable packages will include a few sports channels like ESPN/FS1; and the super mega deluxe cable packages will have 200+ channels full of nonsense (music, old movies, sitcom/game show re-runs, etc = low carriage fee filler)
TNT's NBA package for the last few years has only been a couple games per week, so not a huge amount of games but enough to keep TNT's carriage fees higher (along with WBD in general, because TNT/TBS/TruTV/CNN/etc are bundled together). Combined with MLB, NHL and other sports, you can expect sports fans to continue to insist cable provider include TNT in all base-level cable packages. By losing NBA games, cable providers won't be willing to pay as much for the WBD bundle of channels, so their revenue per-subscriber will go down substantially, even if TNT itself stays in the same overall number of homes
It's not as simple as replacing NBA with AEW @ $500,000,000/year, because NBA is premium programming according to advertisers, and professional wrestling is not. The steeper WBD's carriage fee losses run, the greater the chances AEW gets cancelled and replaced with lower-cost programming like Bellator compilations/re-runs. It's possible WBD keeps Collision/Rampage and Tony Khan is able to shop Dynamite to another channel -- or vice versa -- but I can't see WBD giving AEW the kind of 3-show mega-raise Tony is expecting given WBD's dire financial situation. Tony's best deal is to shop around but he's racing the clock right now.
