Warner Bros. Discovery strikes 10-year deal to broadcast the French Open within the U.S.

Warner Bros. Discovery’s TNT Sports activities would be the new unique U.S. broadcaster of the French Open, also called Roland-Garros, starting in 2025, the corporate introduced Tuesday.

The leisure firm signed a 10-year contract with the French Tennis Federation for a median of about $65 million per 12 months, in line with an individual acquainted with the matter.

The deal is ready to make Warner Bros. Discovery the most important international broadcast accomplice to the Grand Slam match, which hosted 675,000 spectators this 12 months. Warner Bros. Discovery-owned Eurosport has been broadcasting the French Open to 55 international locations outdoors the U.S. since 1989, in line with a press launch.

“Roland-Garros completely aligns with our international sports activities technique and our dedication to including premium dwell sports activities content material to our TNT Sports activities portfolio. We look ahead to serving followers with a best-in-class content material expertise and offering them with direct entry to extra dwell Roland-Garros protection than ever earlier than,” TNT Sports activities Chairman and CEO Luis Silberwasser mentioned within the launch.

Per the settlement, the matches might be broadcast dwell on TNT, TBS and TruTV, together with simulcasts on the corporate’s streaming platform Max.

Earlier than this deal, the match was broadcast within the U.S. by Comcast’s NBC and streaming service Peacock and the Tennis Channel via a sublicensing deal.

TNT Sports activities introduced it would have an on-site presence, together with studio and saying groups from a number of positions contained in the Roland Garros Stadium in Paris, with additional particulars on protection to be introduced within the coming months.

The information comes as Warner Bros. Discovery is launching a joint sports activities streaming service referred to as Venu with Disney’s ESPN and Fox. Venu is ready to launch this fall and can embrace TNT, TBS and TruTV in its providing of channels.

Including the French Open is extra proof that the corporate needs so as to add dwell sports activities if the value is sensible for the funding. Prior to now three years, TNT Sports activities has acquired rights for the Nationwide Hockey League, NASCAR, U.S. Soccer, the College Football Playoffs (via a sublicensing cope with ESPN), and now the French Open.

In the meantime, Warner Bros. Discovery continues to be in negotiations with the NBA to increase its partnership to broadcast dwell video games. Whereas NBCUniversal has made a suggestion for the bundle of video games TNT Sports activities has been carrying, Warner Bros. Discovery is specializing in a special bundle of video games, CNBC previously reported.

With the hangover from the Hollywood writers’ strike and cost-cutting measures throughout the business, together with at Warner Bros. Discovery, media giants have been leaning heavily on sports as a approach to usher in greater audiences and extra promoting {dollars}.

Disclosure: Comcast is the father or mother firm of NBCUniversal and CNBC.

— CNBC’s Alex Sherman contributed to this report.