TNT Sports has reported a pre-tax loss of £187.5m for the first 12 months following its rebrand from BT Sports.
Reporting its financials and filing them to Companies House in Cardiff, TNT Sports filed the pre-tax loss for the 12 months ending 31 July 2024. This follows a £73.4m loss in 2023 before the rebrand.
Despite the losses over the past two years, TNT Sports’ revenue from contracts with customers stood at £1.15bn, an increase from the £1.093bn from 2023.
TNT Sports is one of the leading sports broadcasters in the UK, with lucrative rights for the UEFA Champions League, Premier League, NBA and in rugby union, cricket and tennis.
The attention from sports fans with these broadcast rights has brought new revenue from advertisers. Advertising revenue generated £72.1m for 2024, an increase from £51.1m the year before.
TNT Sports will be looking to increase advertising revenue for the next several years after joining Sky Media’s Sports Marketplace, a division designed to bring about new opportunities for interested advertisers to broadcast on platforms like TNT Sports.
For the 2024 financial year, TNT Sports’ distribution revenue increased to £1.07bn and while the increases in revenue can be viewed as a byproduct of the co-ownership of BT and Warners Bros. Discovery, the broadcaster will be keen to cut its losses.
Within the strategic report, a statement said: “The UK sports broadcasting sector is a mature market driven by strong demand for live sports content, widely distributed across digital and traditional platforms.
“The rise of streaming services offers further opportunities to enhance viewer experiences. The strategy of the company is to capitalise on this strong demand for live sport to deliver growth whilst also developing further product improvements to drive customer value.”
An increasingly competitive market
As the report highlighted, the rise of streaming services within the sports broadcasting landscape has added increasing competition, with traditional services financially competing against new age streaming services.
This battle has seen a surge in sports broadcast rights, with the Premier League securing a £6.7bn, four-year broadcast rights deal with TNT Sports and Sky Sports, a new record for a European football league.
Although the Premier League surprisingly dropped its streaming partner Amazon Prime Video for its next broadcast cycle, interest from the likes of Amazon, Netflix and DAZN has put increasing pressure from traditional services to retain sports rights.
Another cause for concern for traditional broadcasters would be the increased preferences amongst younger sports fan demographic who favour short-form content, as opposed to watching full-length broadcasts live.
Speaking to Insider Sport, WSC Sports Business Development Team Lead, Ben Mirvis, spoke at length on why traditional media outfits need to integrate short-form content and emerging technologies like AI so they don’t get left behind.
