All right, let's, let's get started. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning. I am Laurent Yoon. I cover U.S. media and telecom at Bernstein. It is my great pleasure to introduce to you, the CEO and President and CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery, David Zaslav. Thank you for making the time to be here this morning.
Thank you, Laurent.
Since Warner Brothers Discovery is a media company, we would like to do this a little bit differently. We would like to start with a video to show you all the great things that Warner Brothers Discovery has. All right?
Every good thing in this world started with a dream, so you hold on to yours. You have a greater purpose than any of us could have ever imagined.
Change is a good thing. I think that's what it's all about, embracing change. Oh, hey, hey, hey! One last thing.
Do you believe in miracles?
The Barbie movie has taken over.
The global teams embarked upon a goal of turning the world pink.
HGTV is building a life-size Barbie dream house. We leave our legacy in your hands. The NBA's all-time scoring record belongs to LeBron James.
I'm gonna build something bigger, faster, wilder.
We are going to change the world. I provided for my students today. That's huge!
What more of a fairy tale could a guy live for?
The Oscar goes to The Bounty.
You're the best, or you wouldn't be here.
You have taken this to another level. Not Your Mama's Color Purple, but your mama gonna like that.
This is an extraordinary time. It's more important than ever to know what is true and what is not.
Just had a massive barrage of rockets.
Our mission is to get to the heart of the matter.
Films tell a very unique story of this country.
There are times when one must choose the hardest road.
You really think we're gonna find them, do you?
I guess I might believe some miracles.
Hey, hey, we're back, baby!
We're now less than a year out from the presidential election. Let's lift.
How many of those?
It all goes down, right?
Humans only have one ending. To give to forever.
All right. That's pretty awesome. Yeah. So the first time I watched this, something like this a few years back, I was kind of amazed with the plethora of content that the company has. Obviously, this is not just one company. This actually, in the past couple of years, the two companies have come together, two big companies coming together to be even a bigger company. You're managing two companies with kind of different focus on the type of content they were doing, I'm sure very different cultures and different history. But first, I'd like to start off with, what is it—how has it been, right, putting the two big companies together with different priorities, perhaps in the past? And obviously, you and your, your management team has been, have been very busy, right?
You know, streamlining the plate, making sure they capture all the cost efficiencies and balance growth and all that. But going back, what is it like to kind of combine the two companies? How do you incentivize your team with different set of businesses, some growing, some not, you have to make trade-offs across the organization. What has it been like?
Well, it's been a little over two years. I think what you were able to see there is just a little of what we do. Warner Brothers Discovery is probably the greatest storytelling company in the world. That's all we do. We're just a storytelling company. But over the last two years, we've set on this journey of a multi-year plan to transform this company for the future. How do we take all this great content, all these great creatives, and rebuild this company as if we started today in the world that we're living in? And we're making a lot of progress. We're making a lot of progress on our balance sheet. We're making a lot of progress on the creative side. And I think our greatest strength is the diversity of great content that we have.
As a mantra within the company, our philosophy is, the best content wins. And if we have the greatest content, our job is to get it around the world, to make sure everyone can see it. And that's been our focus.
Got it... Speaking of content, I think industry overall, especially in the past couple of years, had challenges creating great content. Maybe one of your competitors, in particular, have talked about how it's been very challenging with, with the storytelling. Warner Brothers Discovery, especially the, the HBO brand, I mean, the company has produced very high-quality content day in, day out. We got, you know, Succession, we've got Game of Thrones, The Last of Us, Harry Potter, DC Comics. I mean, the list is quite impressive. You had Barbie last year. It's very consistent. One question that comes up quite often is: How is the-- your company able to consistently produce high-quality content while some of your competitors have trouble, you know, have had trouble, have had that trouble, especially in recent years?
Well, first, it starts with the quality of people. Casey Bloys and the whole team at HBO and Max, Max are having an extraordinary run. House of the Dragon is launching next week, The Last of Us, Succession, White Lotus. So it really starts with a great creative team. But we have a big advantage. The company's been around for 100 years, and we have some of these tentpole, IP storytelling content that people know everywhere in the world. So whether it's Superman or Batman or Wonder Woman or whole DC franchise that James Gunn is really driving, or whether it's Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones, we sit with content, and the good news for us is a lot of it has been underused.
So really deploying Harry Potter for 10 consecutive seasons, which will launch in 2025. We're getting back to making movies with Peter Jackson, with Lord of the Rings. So one is, I think, great creative people. We've put in a great team at Warner Brothers.
Mm-hmm.
Taking advantage of the fact that we have certain content, and that may only be a third of what we do. A lot of it is just creating Ted Lasso or Shrinking or Abbott Elementary. But when you look at our company, it isn't just that we have great people. We've hired some of the best people working for Warner Brothers Television. So Warner Brothers Television is the biggest and most successful quality maker of television, but we have Bill Lawrence working for us, Chuck Lorre, Mindy Kaling, J.J. Abrams. So I think being the place that people wanna come is key to us.
I think the fact that we're just a storytelling company, whether it's on in the theaters or whether it's on HBO, or whether it's content that we create and sell to Netflix or Apple or Amazon, that's the culture that's really gonna have, I believe, gonna make us a global winner.
Got it. So I think one thing that often also comes up is recognizing that Warner Brothers Discovery does have an amazing slate of content and an IP library of IP that you can leverage. May perhaps one disadvantage that you may have is scale, right? So you have your competitors who may not be producing as high-quality content, but they do have kind of okay-ish content that's introduced. There's something always new to watch. How do you solve that problem? Because you kinda need to have both, right? To make sure that you have custom client consumers who wanna be on the platform, and what really drives that is the engagement. How do you solve for the engagement part of that equation?
Well, scale is very important. As we look at our business, the first thing we needed to do on our Max, Max HBO product was rebuild the actual product itself, build an algorithm. But right now, we're primarily U.S.
Mm-hmm.
We have 100 million homes, but this is a real catalyst opportunity for us. The DNA of our company is international. When I was at Discovery, I got there, we were three channels. We grew it to about 14, but then we launched channels everywhere in the world, and then we launched sports around the world. So we're in 185 countries. We're in every language. We have content that we produce or sports that we have in every country, and it's been very effective for us as a company. We're the number one global company in the world. But we hadn't launched Max globally.
You know, if you look at a lot of these services that have bigger scale than us, two-thirds of their subscribers come from outside the U.S. So in the last month, we launched in Latin America, and we just launched in Europe. The big kickoff will be, we have the Olympics in Europe, that you get all the Olympics. The only place to get all the Olympics will be Max, and then our product will roll out. And so I think the next 12-14, 12-24 months for us is gonna be very exciting because we got our product right. We have, I think, a really unique advantage in that we have local content in local language with libraries.
We have the breadth of HBO and Max, and we have local sport, and we're bringing all of that now to Latin America and to Europe. It's exciting because I think it gives us a chance to really scale. In our models, we expect that at least two-thirds of our subscribers over the next several years, as we grow, will come from outside the U.S. So, you know, we still think that there's growth left in the U.S., but the U.S. is relatively mature. We can still grow subs, we can still grow ARPU, but the real growth engine for us is to be global. When I look at, you know, at media companies, I think it's very difficult to be a U.S.-only company.
The real success of Discovery was that we were global. I think this next step for us, we're fully global on linear and free to air. Having a real service that people can access on all devices will be a big advantage to us, and I think a big growth engine for us.
Got it. So by having more subscribers, we saw it in the U.S., but to your point, it's in the churn market, having more subscribers outside the U.S. market will drive, perhaps not more engagement on a per subscriber basis, but the total engagement across the globe will, will increase. Like, where does bundling come into that picture, right? So obviously, it's been a hot topic since the earnings and the announcement, the bundling with, with Disney. There's a lot of optimism around that, like what it may look like and what it may do for both of your platforms, right? How does that help drive overall engagement and subscription growth going forward?
Well, you know, I've said. I've been talking about bundling for the last two years. But the real focus of our company in terms of driving this transformation and this multi-year plan, has been that this is a generational disruption. The disruption is not as much around content. People are watching more content than they ever have, and quality content is more important, I think, than it ever has been. But the way that they receive it, the distribution method, whether they get it on their device or whether they get it from one app, you know. Right now, it's a really challenging environment for consumers. So if you hear about a show, or you hear about a sport, you gotta Google it. Where is it? What platform is it on? And so the consumer experience is challenged.
We've gotten used to it, but over time, I'm convinced, and we're convinced, that that experience will get better, and we need to drive it to a better consumer experience, which will get us better economics and a better product. So one, we think bundling provides a better consumer experience. And we have two initiatives that'll be rolling out in the next month or in the next three months. One is our sports venture, which we'll roll out this fall, which is Disney, Fox, and us. It's a very contemporary product. It's an app. So if you wanna see hockey, you can see all the playoffs in one place. You can see all the baseball in one place. It's a different approach. We think it'll be very attractive, and it'll be a better consumer experience, a real contemporary consumer experience.
The Disney bundle is another example where we think it should provide, first and foremost, a better consumer experience. You get Hulu, Disney+, and Max. And if it works, and Disney and we are really gonna drive it here in the U.S., it should reduce churn. Two of us will be marketing one product. And because we're doing it directly, the ARPU could be quite compelling for us. So I think it's the beginning of this transition from people going to 10 different apps. Eventually, I think there's gonna be four or five, and we're convinced, with the best content, the best quality content in the world, and maybe more global content than anyone else, it will be one of those.
And as the bundling happens or as the consolidation around the world happens, I think that the economics around the business will get better and better.
Got it. So I'd like to peel the onion a little bit on both the sports venture and your partnership with Disney. So on the sports venture, just based on what's on the press, if I think about how Fox, your partner, Fox, is thinking about that, what they have expressed is the opportunity to reach consumers who may not have a sports package today through a traditional pay-TV offer. On the other hand, maybe Disney, on the other hand, maybe their perspective is not so much about the incremental opportunity, but just making sure that there are different tiers of products that are available across different price points. I think relative to those two companies, I think your company has been. I wouldn't say silent, but less vocal about the potential benefits of it.
Where do you, where do you stand? Do you think this is more about how Fox is thinking about it, as in, in terms of incremental subscribers, by reaching customers who may not have a package today? Or is this more about how Disney is thinking about it as, as in having all the different tiers available for customers with different budgets for these, for the packages?
Yeah. In the end, the consumers are gonna decide what they love and what they're willing to pay for and where they feel nourished and wanna spend time. I'm excited about this because I think it's a, it's a great product, and this whole idea of what channel is this particular sport on goes away. It's all there for you. And so, and if that experience is as good as we think it's gonna be-
Mm.
and we'll listen to the consumer and build on that, then I think it could be a very big business for us. And it's critical for us to work to create products that are contemporary. To your point, we have a business called Bleacher Report and House of Highlights. Between 30 and 40 million people a month come. It's a sports product. But 80%, it's very young, below 30 is the average demo. And about 80% of those that are on Bleacher and House of Highlights are not signing up for cable. And yet, they're very interested in the content that we have.
So, by building these bundles or by creating a sports product, I think we're creating a great invitation for the next generation to come on to a contemporary, exciting new product and see the sports they love, and we'll learn a lot from it.
Mm-hmm. So moving on to the Disney+, Max bundle. You mentioned something interesting, on how you, you know, on how you describe the product. So you mentioned today there are, you know, different places to go. You have, you know, content in one place. You could come and experience it. Does it imply that, for example, like creation, you want to release just, "I'm getting two different products at a discounted price, but I still need to open, let's say, two different apps to get to the product or the content?" Or are we talking about combining new experiences? That's something perhaps, perhaps down the line from the experience.
Well, for the bundle really to be effective, it needs to be that when you go there, you can move across the full, the full program offering. So, you know, my grandkids might be watching, you know, a Disney+ movie, but then when they're finished, they'd come, they would, they would wanna watch Harry Potter.
Mm-hmm.
And then at night, you might wanna watch Succession.
Mm-hmm.
So the seamlessness of it is important, and that's what would drive the product.
Okay.
So seamless experience across the platforms.
Okay. So, at the Upfront a couple of weeks ago, I went to every single one of them, and in every single one of them, there was a, you know, funny comedian who would kind of talk about the making fun of the bundle, right? The basic cable coming back and et cetera. Maybe to some degree that may be true, but how would... How do you envision the streaming bundle in terms of the consumer experience to be different, or is this, like, over time, something that we've seen with the pay TV offering in the past?
Well, first, one of the issues with the streaming services is that the churn is too high. People are coming in and then moving from product to product. And so one of the things that's really challenging the long-term economic and economic growth is churn and scale. We're addressing the issue of scale by launching globally and really attacking the globe with what we think is very compelling content in language with teams on the ground to try and build the scale that should really drive the economics both in terms of- and drive the subscribers and prove out that Max is a very compelling growth business. But separate from that is the issue of churn, and by bundling together that will be...
We have found that when you bundle together with other content that more people in the family like, you know, on a very basic level, the more often you watch a product, the more people in the family that watch the product, the lower the churn. And, as we talk to consumers, one of the biggest issues is finding the content that they like. So, you know, when you do bundle, if you're bundling with the right-
Mm-hmm
... with the right players, whether it be a Disney, the idea of Warner Brothers Discovery and Disney together is a very, you know, compelling offering. We think that will provide a more nourishing, better consumer experience. The other thing that started to happen, which makes us really optimistic in terms of a new vein of growth, is as we're launching outside the U.S., a number of the traditional distributors that were broadband and cable or broadband and mobile, their overall philosophy was they were in the broadband business, and they're in the multi-channel for the home business. And the whole idea of the channel store was Roku or Apple or Amazon.
What we've started to see now, particularly in Europe, is the idea that those distributors, we're having discussions with them now about they don't want the younger consumer or the younger consumer in the family to leave their multi-channel environment or leave their company. And so we're doing deals now that's hard bundling Max with distributors. So for instance, Canal+, we're on their platform as a traditional multi-channel provider with multiple channels and free-to-air. They have broadband, but then everybody that gets their broadband gets Max. We did a similar deal with Telefónica, and those... Because they're hard bundled, you're picking up significant subscribers, whether it's 1 million or 2 million incremental subscribers. In some cases, it's less. In some cases, it could be more. Gaining those subscribers provide real economic value. The ARPU is quite compelling.
You don't have the churn. We're still in France, and we're still in Spain, now that we're gonna be promoting directly to consumers. But if you're a customer of Telefónica, we're getting paid on every one of those. It feels a little bit like the old model: sturdy, low churn, and you don't need to spend as much in marketing because of that. So, as we launch outside the U.S., it's bundling. One is we think our product is the right product at the right time, and we- this is who we are and what we do. We're on the ground in every country and every language.
But bundling with other providers that have great content, that complement ours, together with this idea of hard bundling with distributors that are looking to have a bigger play in this new world and want to have a content environment on their broadband, is a potential real growth opportunity for us.
So after watching the video, perhaps I got a little too excited and jumped right into the questions. There's a sort of an overarching question that I forgot to address, and I want to address it now so that we don't miss it. So one quick context here, for those of you who don't already know, is that David has been around in the industry for a long time. He started as an attorney in the industry, was a senior executive at NBCUniversal, which is now part of Comcast, where I used to work, and he became the CEO of Discovery, and of course, now he is the CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery, the combined entity.
So I'd like to say we have an adult in the room, and I have an overarching question in the industry. So the question is about industry disruption in general. And again, one context for some of the generals here is that the media industry has already gone through many disruptions over the past century, right? And obviously, the Warner Brothers Discovery has been around over the past century. It's been around for a long time, not you, but the company has been around for a century, and it has gone through multiple transitions, right? It went from print to video, went from black and white to color, went from TV broadcasting to pay TV. And every one of these, whenever that happened, that there was a pretty significant disruption in the industry, right?
And obviously, Warner Brothers Discovery has outlived it, and here we are. This one that we're going through now, the disruption through streaming, feels a little different. It seems, perhaps because we're living through it now, it seems pretty quick, right? And it is also being kind of driven by large companies, very well capitalized, and especially initially, they didn't really care about the unit economics or making money from the businesses. It was really challenging for the core media companies to compete. So given that, what is happening now, two-part question here. The first part is, how do you compete? Right, how do you stay young as an organization to continue to compete against these companies that are throwing billions and billions of dollars, right?
Perhaps not, I don't wanna say careless, but maybe don't care as much about the unit economics of those businesses. How do you, how do you compete long run?
Well, I think we stay true to who we are. We're a pure storytelling company, and as long as we're making the best content and we're attracting the best creative talent in the world, and when we tell a story, it's a story that you wanna go home and you wanna put the TV set on, or you wanna go into the theater and watch, we're gonna be a very healthy company. And in terms of that box, we're the biggest producer of quality television. You look at the quality content we're producing at HBO and Max. And so over the last 2+ years, since we took over, really had two focuses. One, we recognized very early on that this is a generational disruption.
Yes.
And so we need to restructure this company for the future. Taking a look at each business, what does this business look like if we were gonna start it today? What do we need? What content is working for us? What isn't? And so we were quite aggressive over the last two years. When we took the company over on a trailing basis, it was losing $3 billion. Max itself was losing $2.5 billion. So one was, we need to get this business healthy and restructured for the future. What does this business look like so that we have the best chance of succeeding? And, you know, here we are, 2.5 years in. Last year, we had over $6 billion in free cash flow. Part of being healthy is having a healthy balance sheet.
So we've paid down over $15 billion in debt. We look at our capital structure now as a real asset. We went into the market last week and did a tender, where we bought back. We had $2.6 billion, and we were able to buy back $3.4 billion in debt, because our debt is so low in terms of interest rate, that it's really an asset for us. So one was: How do we get this company looking toward the future? We've built a great team, and we have a long-term plan. It's gonna take time. We have a long-term plan for DC. This idea of taking Max globally, we've been working on it for over two years. We're finally gonna be driving Max around the world.
But I think one piece of it is to really get in there early and recognize that things aren't gonna be the same. And the second was, we need to have the best creative content in the world. We need the best creatives with us. So we've been fighting, as we've been restructuring the company, to get the best creative people with us. Ryan Coogler is back at Warner Brothers. Tom Cruise is back at-
Oh, I saw that.
is at Warner Brothers. Clooney, Paul Thomas Anderson. So you know, we have great creative people. We want the best creative people with us. But disruption is not new. You know, when I started at NBC, I was part of the team that launched CNBC, but at that time, it was a huge disruption. Will it be just a broadcast, or will it be a real business? And we were so unsure that it would be a business, that Jack Welch felt like we can't do this ourselves. So we partnered with Chuck Dolan, and we launched AMC, Bravo, IFC, CNBC, MSNBC, News 12 Long Island, sports channels. Four years in, they were all losing money, but we had to fight and will them to success, and then we had to scale them up. It's not that different.
And during that time, a lot of people felt it's not gonna make the turn. I feel that same way now about where we are. We have got Max profitable. We have a great bouquet of content. We've learned a lot about what works and what doesn't. And as we take this around the world... I think we have a real opportunity, because in order to be successful in this business, you know, we've been committed to global in our traditional business. But in order to really be successful, we need to be global, and this is a good moment for us.
So speaking of the need to be global, and also—actually, I would like to touch on the global part a little later. But the history of linear, the transition over to pay TV, and now the transition over to SVOD, and the disruption that has caused, and that we're witnessing now. It has caused so much disruption that one may describe the industry as a set of special situation companies, right? And the question is, obviously, the migration to streaming will continue. However, the linear market is still, especially in the advertising market, still the vast majority of video advertising, so on linear. So it has to coexist going forward.
So this is not so much about Warner Brothers. Discovery question, but more industry-level question around, if we roll the tape that takes 3-5 years, like, what would that look like? What would that coexistence look like? And do you think will eventually lead to some kind of a temporary equilibrium?
Well, I think there's likely gonna be some consolidation. There are a lot of players. There are a lot of players that are losing a lot of money. One of the reasons why we really fought to drive our Free Cash Flow and pay down our debt is to be in a position, as we roll out globally, as we fight to build our business, that we're a healthy company. And over the next 2-3 years, I expect that there's gonna be some opportunities. There'll be some players that wanna get out of the business. There'll be others that will look to consolidate their streaming businesses with others. And so I think we will look to be opportunistic during that time. So I think over time, there'll probably be fewer players.
I expect that there'll be four or five global streaming players that if we were here three or four years from now, I think in order to be, as I said, to be successful, I believe you need to be global. If we create Harry Potter content, the ability to put that in every language, everywhere in the world, that is scale, and that's formidable. And so I think that the global nature of this business is gonna require a number of players to decide whether they wanna go it alone.
Our job has been to really focus on the fact that we're stable and strong, and to roll out around the world, and then to focus on others, you know, in an opportunistic way, that can maybe help us along the way, whether it's through bundling, like Disney, whether it's through bundling with Fox and Disney, or whether it's hard bundling with distributors, or whether, you know, over the long term, some of the smaller players in streaming will end up wanting to be part of a bigger global organization.
So I may be pushing the envelope a little bit, so I'd like to give it a try. So, you mentioned, you know, there's likely to be consolidation, the fewer players down the line, you're getting your balance sheet healthier. Are you suggesting that potentially down the line, at some point, you may be looking to do an interesting acquisition?
Well, consolidation could happen in a lot of different ways. You know, in some markets in Europe, the consolidation is almost like a Hulu consolidation. The companies are staying separate, but instead of three or four companies creating streaming services, they're coming together to create one that has a broader breadth of local content.
Mm-hmm.
I do think that some companies will be for sale.
Mm-hmm.
We're gonna be very disciplined. I really like the content, the, the broad content that we have. We feel that we're in a good position right now, and we can be opportunistic, but we're gonna be very disciplined.
Got it. Okay. So turning to globalization, maybe the broader theme under or over globalization is distribution, right? So there's sort of two ways to play the game. The one end, you have distribution platform, say Amazon Prime Video is more on the distribution side. Netflix, certainly until more recently, it was more of a distribution play. It's a platform play. You have the pure play on the other side, producing content, right? And in recent years, we could clearly see that the one with distribution built scale, had the money to start producing content. Some of them are pretty good, you know, but they definitely have the library of the content now. So what used to be distributed, like platform companies, have become platform plus content. If you were to...
Hypothetical situation: If you were to rebuild WBD from scratch, would you build a platform company, or would you build a content company?
I think the content company is the most powerful. In the end, this idea of the best content wins. If you look at almost every business, in the end, the consumer finds the product they like the best, whether it's the best cookie, whether it's the best sandwich, whether it's the best storytelling. And so focusing on... You know, right now, the marketplace is not giving, you know, great value to the content side of the business. Right now, if you look at the overall multiples, the marketplace is giving much better multiples and much bigger value to the distribution side.
Mm-hmm.
And there's good reasons for that. I think in the end, there's gonna be real value for the distribution... and the content side. You know, we are driving our distribution because part of it is we need to have a global platform.
Absolutely.
But in the end, if you look at how people are finding their way to whether it was finding their way to Barbie or finding their way to Wonka, or finding their way to the great quality content on Max, where we score as the highest in quality, that's what we do, that's who we are. I think that's what we do better than anybody else. And I think that focus on having great content in every language, everywhere in the world, and at the same time now being in a position where we can drive that content on a platform globally, will, I think, create a lot of shareholder value.
All right. So we'd like to address one elephant in the room and turn to sports. And just to kind of clear the table, no specific questions on the negotiation with the NBA, none of that. But I'd like to kind of take a slightly different angle to that. So generally, the general view in the market, and a lot of the questions I get or commentary I get, is WBD today, when it comes to NBA, is left with two options. But it's not a WBD issue, it's basically all the players want the right. You can pay up an exorbitant—what seems to be an exorbitant amount, or you may or give it up. Those are sort of, and both options don't seem that appealing, right?
The question I have is around: What would WBD, or maybe TNT more specifically, what would it look like without the NBA rights? Because... And I don't mean that in a negative way, because at the end of the day, it's a capital allocation issue, right? So if you can make the case that you could spend that money to generate a good return on something else, maybe that is a compelling as well, right? So what would that look like? What would WBD and TNT look like without the NBA?
Well, first, we continue to talk to the NBA.
Mm-hmm.
Our teams does an extraordinary job on the NBA, Inside the NBA, with Barkley and Shaq. It's maybe the best sports television show.
Yeah.
I was just down in Atlanta. We've got a great team down there, and we've loved our experience with the NBA. But in general, we're a leader in sports around the world, and we have the Olympics in Europe, with leading we have most of the football in the U.K., where TNT Sports, we have a whole buffet of content around the world. We have football in a number of markets in Europe and in Latin America. This is what we do for a living. We're in the business of sport, and in sport, the deals come up, and you have and you look at those deals, and you make a decision about the overall quality of the full menu of content you have for each of your platforms.
And our job, my job, and our leadership team, and Luis, is to be very strategic about what content we have on TNT in the U.K., what content do we have in Europe, what content do we have in Latin America, and making sure that we have what we think is enough content to create real shareholder value. And so we have been on a journey here in the U.S. We added, after most of our deals were done, we added hockey with Gary Bettman. We added a summer of NASCAR, and we just added college football.
When you put that together with March Madness and baseball playoffs and the U.S. soccer that we have, it has a very robust offering for consumers that they can watch on TNT in the U.S. all year round. That is our job, is to continue to look at how do we continue to nourish an audience that loves sports on TNT? How do we continue to nourish an audience throughout Europe that loves sports and in Latin America? That's what we've been doing. We've been very strategic about adding sport to TNT over the last several years, and we feel really good about where we are.
Okay. So if I were to summarize, even without it, whatever happens with the NBA, the value proposition of the TNT is a good destination for a plethora of content in each of the relevant markets that you play in.
We feel very comfortable, and we've been very strategically focused-
Mm-hmm.
-on making sure that we have a robust offering of sports for each of our sports channels in the U.S. and around the world.
Got it. Okay. In the remaining 5, 6 minutes, I'd like to just squeeze in 3 more questions. The next one, maybe I'm too ambitious here. So the next one is on CNN. So I know CNN, obviously, it's a, it's a smaller part of, of WBD, but when I went to the upfront and saw Mark Thompson on stage, and when he talked about all the compelling content, the storytelling that he's planning, it kind of reminded me of NPR storytelling at scale. And, and I mean that in a very, very good way. And for those of you who don't know Mark Thompson, he was. He headed up, BBC, what you would call proper British news. And also he turned around New York Times, with a digital strategy.
So he's a very credible executive, and his story was quite compelling. It's not just me, I think a lot of the investors had that impression. What is the future of CNN? Because it hasn't done so well. The ratings have suffered, but another way to kind of think about that is maybe there's only upside from where it is, especially with Mark Thompson at the helm. What's the future?
Well, Mark is a great executive. CNN has actually done very well for us economically. It's a very strong asset in terms of EBIT and free cash flow. When we think about CNN, we think about the opportunity for CNN as a global brand. We're not looking as much at the ratings, we're looking at is CNN. What are the numbers around CNN as a trusted global brand for news? And those numbers are way up. And I think, you know, we're coming to what we believe is gonna be a real opportunity in that there's very few news organizations around the world that have thousands of great journalists on the ground, almost everywhere in the world, documenting in real time what's going on. And more and more, you know, we think that's gonna be more important.
You know, could we get higher ratings by doing more advocacy in different areas? That's not who we are. We're a news organization with great journalists, and I think that gives us a chance, potentially, and Mark is very focused on this with Alex MacCallum, who he worked with at The New York Times to create a very robust digital business. That's the idea, you know, and particularly now with AI, when people can look at a video and not know if it's real. As human beings, when we would see something with our eyes, we would know it was real. Well, now we're not gonna really know. But when the tanks started to roll on Russia, and we had 28 people on the ground reporting. Clarissa Ward, all of our... You know, a ton of our very credible, recognizable personalities.
And then within 14 minutes, you have Christiane Amanpour behind a desk. What's the result of that? The result is every president, every prime minister, everywhere in the world, has one feed on: CNN. Most other news organizations, they're at a desk. They're not, they're not a news organization the way we are. That currency of being a global, trusted source of news. We're not just a U.S. source of news. We're the only true global, credible, trusted, or maybe the most, we believe, trusted source of news, and that's our job. And that, I think, could be a very big business, and that's what Mark is driving toward. You know, what's the value when people wanna know what's going on in a particular market? So, we've got a great team there. We've got the ability to, this, this idea.
We now have 150 million people come to us a month. We need to get them to spend more time with us. We need them to spend more money with us, but they come to us because they want to know what's going on in the world. So I think that could be very big for us.
So I'll move on. I just decided to cut one of the questions.
Okay.
I'll just have one more.
Was it a hard one?
It was a very difficult one.
Okay.
But actually, I think we addressed it along the way.
Okay.
So I don't think we need to revisit. But if we're to, if you could tell the investors here one takeaway that you would like them to take home, what would that be?
That Max going global with local sport, local content in almost every market, and the great quality content that we have, you know, that we've been producing for... That whether it's the motion pictures or the great storytelling content, is gonna be formidable. And that I believe it's gonna provide most of the growth that we're gonna see over the next couple of years. I think it could be a very big business.
All right. So to close off, I have a word game here. So the rule is, I have five words ready, and after each word, please let us know the very first word or thought that comes up in your mind. First one, Paramount.
Great, great storytelling heritage.
Bundling.
A big piece of the future of streaming and a big economic driver of value.
M&A.
A lot of opportunity lies ahead, but be careful. Make sure you're buying smart.
NBA.
I love those Knicks.
Good, good answer. And lastly, 2025.
A year of real opportunity for us to show that we're a great storytelling company and that content really has value. Great content really has value.
All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here today.
Thank you.
Thank you.