NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell at the CNBC CEO Council in Arizona, May 19, 2025.

Chris Coduto | CNBC

The NFL and Paramount Skydance‘s renewal talks on a deal to keep the league’s Sunday games on CBS are beginning to take shape, CNBC has learned.

NFL and CBS executives are negotiating a price increase, with a bid-ask spread midpoint around 50% or 60%, according to two people familiar with the negotiations, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. CBS currently pays around $2.1 billion a year, on average, for its Sunday afternoon games, CNBC has previously reported. A 50% increase would mean CBS would pay more than $3 billion in its next deal.

In return for the increased revenue, the NFL would eliminate the opt-out clause after the 2029-30 season that it put in its original deal with Paramount, part of an 11-year agreement that runs through the end of the 2033-34 season. That clause would have given the league the chance to walk away early.

CBS would begin paying the new fee as soon as next season for the next eight years for the same package of games.

Paramount’s adjusted projection for its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization for 2026 is $3.6 billion. If Paramount’s merger with Warner Bros. Discovery is approved by regulators, the combined company would have an adjusted EBITDA projection of $18 billion, Paramount Chief Financial Officer Dennis Cinelli told investors this month.

“We have a phenomenal relationship with the NFL, and we anticipate that continuing for the foreseeable future,” Paramount CEO David Ellison told CNBC earlier this month. “They are one of our most important partners, and we plan for them to stay one of our most important partners, having just delivered a historic season in partnership with them. And, you know, ongoing negotiations, we’re not really in a position where we can comment. I promise we’ll share something as soon as we have something to say.”

Comcast‘s NBCUniversal, Amazon Prime Video and Fox are also subject to the 2029-30 opt-out clause in their deals. Disney‘s ESPN and ABC have until 2031.

Referee Shawn Smith talks to New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks players before the coin toss for the 2026 Super Bowl, at Levi’s Stadium, Santa Clara, California, on Feb. 8.

Carlos Barria | Reuters

The league has chosen to begin negotiating with Paramount’s CBS before any of its other media partners because a change-of-control provision — stemming from Skydance Media’s acquisition of Paramount Global — allows the NFL to break its deal by 2027.

The NFL might negotiate with Fox next after CBS because the terms of the deal should be similar — both companies own Sunday afternoon packages, one of the people familiar with the matter said.

Fox currently pays slightly more than CBS for its package of games — about $2.2 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. Fox will “certainly look to [be] continuing that mutually beneficial relationship going forward” with the NFL, but it hasn’t had any “material conversations” on a renewal yet, CEO Lachlan Murdoch said earlier this month at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference.

The NFL also hasn’t begun material discussions with Amazon, NBC or Disney, according to people familiar with the matter. It’s unclear if the league would look to push forward with a similar 50% increase for all three of those packages.

Some executives at NBC and at Disney believe the relative strengths of their packages — Sunday Night Football and Monday Night Football — have diminished as the NFL has given Amazon better games for its Thursday Night Football in recent years, according to people familiar with the matter.

ESPN already pays $2.7 billion for Monday Night Football. A 50% increase would mean ESPN would pay more than $4 billion for that package — a number Disney would likely balk at, according to people familiar with the matter.

Downstream implications

The timing and scope of the NFL’s new deals could have a significant effect on the value of other sports’ rights in the coming years.

The NHL currently has TV deals with Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery, which expire after the 2028 season. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman has had a number of conversations about renewing a deal before the NFL, according to two people familiar with the matter. Still, he will likely have to wait until Paramount’s deal to acquire WBD closes before inking a new agreement.

“As with an ongoing relationship, you’re always talking about the future, and from our standpoint it’s not in the context of the NFL,” said NHL spokesman Jon Weinstein.

Murdoch said last month that Fox would have to “rebalance” its sports portfolio once it pays the NFL.

Versant CEO Mark Lazarus said earlier this month he’s “prepared for the sports landscape to be shifting,” given the outsize cost of the NFL. That could allow Versant, which owns the USA Network and other cable channels, to buy rights to sports such as the NHL or MLB “that we might not have otherwise gotten involved with,” he said.

Disclosure: Versant is the parent company of CNBC.

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The Paramount logo is displayed above an entrance to Paramount Studios on Feb. 23, 2026 in Los Angeles, California.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

A day after Paramount Skydance emerged as the winner to take over fellow media giant Warner Bros. Discovery, questions are mounting about the companies’ regulatory path forward.

The WBD board said on Thursday that Paramount’s revised $31-per-share offer was superior to an existing bid from Netflix, prompting the streamer to announce that it was walking away from the deal entirely and clearing the way for Paramount.

Paramount’s raised offer — up from $30 per share — was the latest in a series of moves it made after it launched a hostile bid late last year to buy WBD. It had initially lost out on a bidding war to Netflix, which offered $27.75 per share.

Paramount’s latest bid also included a $7 billion breakup fee if the deal doesn’t win regulatory approval. And according to a Friday filing, it has already paid the $2.8 billion breakup fee that WBD owed to Netflix if the deal fell through.

But media industry experts said it’s looking more likely that the Paramount deal will get through government scrutiny than it did when Netflix was in the picture.

Netflix vs. Paramount

Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters said Thursday that it was “no longer financially attractive” to match Paramount’s raised offer.

Though Netflix executives had said they were “highly confident” that their deal would win approval, the merger would have brought together two top streaming services — Netflix and Paramount+ — and could have potentially raised prices for consumers and decreased competition.

In early December, Trump said the Netflix-WBD deal “could be a problem” because of the increased market share Netflix would gain, saying he would be involved. He walked back those comments earlier this month, saying the deal would be at the sole discretion of the Department of Justice.

And while the size of a combined Netflix and WBD entity was one of the companies’ largest antitrust obstacles, that issue could still be raised for Paramount.

Both Paramount and WBD have sprawling portfolios of TV networks, in addition to Paramount+ hitting 78.9 million subscribers, according to its most recent earnings report, and HBO Max counting 131.6 million subscribers through the end of 2025.

Paramount executives argued one of the pros of their offer was that a deal with the media company would garner less government scrutiny. Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison’s father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, is known to have close relations with President Donald Trump.

Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is backing the Paramount deal, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Still, Paramount’s proposed deal had come under criticism for potentially being funded by the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia; Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; and Qatar. The company has previously said that those entities have agreed to forgo all governance rights, including board representation.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, warned on Thursday night that the merger was “not a done deal” and that the California Department of Justice, which has an open investigation into the deal, will be vigorous in its review.

And Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said in a statement that the Paramount and WBD merger is “an antitrust disaster threatening higher prices and fewer choices for American families.”

A potential for fewer concerns

Analysts from Raymond James said they believe the Paramount-WBD deal could pose far less of a risk for regulatory approval than a Netflix tie-up.

In a Friday note, the analysts said the regulatory path forward for Paramount is “meaningfully easier” than Netflix’s, though it would not be a “cakewalk.”

“Of course, there are new challenges with this deal around news, cable networks, international linear networks, etc., but we still feel the WBD/PSKY deal is more palatable all-in,” the analysts wrote. “And, particularly following the reaction to the WBD/NFLX agreement, we believe PSKY’s political standing with the current U.S. administration is much stronger than Netflix’s.”

The analysts noted that questions remain about how the competitive market for the companies will be defined by the DOJ, and they speculated that Netflix likely decided not to match Paramount’s superior offer because of what was “likely to be a brutal regulatory review.”

A Friday note by Morningstar analysts echoed those thoughts. The analysts said the move was right for both Netflix and Paramount because they believed Netflix was unnecessarily overpaying for WBD’s streaming and studios.

Notably, Paramount aimed to buy the entirety of WBD, including its pay-TV networks, such as CNN, TBS and TNT, while Netflix only wanted the company’s studio and streaming assets.

“This is the best outcome for Warner shareholders, in our view, as we’ve felt that, with a higher likelihood of prompt regulatory approval and uncertainty surrounding the value and risk of the network business they would have retained, the best offer would have been $30 in cash,” the analysts wrote.

The analysts added that they don’t expect Paramount to face any regulatory issues during the approval process.

‘Horizontal consolidation’

Joseph Kalmenovitz, an assistant professor of finance at the Simon Business School at the University of Rochester, said Paramount’s timing for the bid was likely strategic.

“David Ellison didn’t just outmaneuver a Hollywood board — he timed the regulatory cycle perfectly,” Kalmenovitz said. “The populist, big-is-bad philosophy is out; the deal-friendly establishment is back in.”

Still, Paren Knadjian, a partner at advisory firm EisnerAmper, said the regulatory path forward for Paramount remains nuanced and isn’t a done deal. While concerns over the Netflix-WBD deal focused largely on library content, the Paramount-WBD deal is far more of a “horizontal consolidation” effort between cable TV, sports, streaming and news, he said.

“I think the biggest thing we’re going to focus on is the concentration of intellectual property under one roof,” Knadjian told CNBC. “What power does that give this new entity in terms of the ability to charge more?”

Knadjian said Paramount will also be facing political concerns, not only from state and federal politicians, but between CNN and CBS combining under one roof, in addition to concerns over blockbuster franchises like “Star Trek” and “Harry Potter.”

Ultimately, the approval of the deal will come down to which concessions the two companies will have to make in order to assuage any fears over a possible media monopoly.

“The regulatory pressure, the political pressure, those are the things that will certainly delay the deal and will make it more complicated, and I think there’s going to have to be significant concessions for it to go through.

There’s so many factors to this. It’s much more complicated than many of the other deals we’ve seen in the past,” Knadjian said.

– CNBC’s Lillian Rizzo contributed to this report.

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An American flag flies at Warner Bros. Studio in Burbank, California, on Sept. 12, 2025.

Mario Tama | Getty Images

The Warner Bros. Discovery board may have enriched its shareholders Thursday when it chose Paramount Skydance‘s acquisition offer over Netflix‘s, but it also terrified a lot of its employees.

While some of those people own WBD shares and may prefer the financials of Paramount’s $31-per-share bid to Netflix’s $27.75-per-share offer, CNBC spoke to 10 WBD employees in a variety of different roles at the company. All 10, who asked not to be named for fear of potential backlash, expressed concerns about potential job losses and questions of who would ultimately run their divisions if Paramount and WBD are eventually merged.

“It’s fair to say people are deflated by the news,” said one long-term WBD executive.

Nonetheless, a WBD-Paramount merger “is not a done deal,” as California Attorney General Rob Bonta said yesterday.

The transaction must gain regulatory approval both in the U.S. and in Europe. WBD CEO David Zaslav acknowledged at an all-hands meeting Friday that the deal may still be blocked and expressed sympathy for those experiencing a sense of whiplash going from Netflix to Paramount, according to people familiar with the matter.

“The deal may not close. If it doesn’t close, we get $7 billion, and we get back to work,” Zaslav said, according to leaked audio provided to Business Insider.

Still, several WBD employees told CNBC they wished Netflix had acquired WBD, citing several factors.

While Paramount and WBD both have core competencies in news, sports, theatrical film and streaming TV, Netflix has far less overlap. Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos repeatedly said he planned to leave the WBD business alone, keeping its theatrical business separate from Netflix while also keeping HBO Max as a separate, independent streaming service for the foreseeable future.

Netflix also wasn’t acquiring WBD’s linear cable business with its bid. Employees at CNN, TNT Sports and the old Discovery networks would have remained in their jobs to forge a path as a standalone publicly traded company.

Now, WBD employees are staring at potentially massive job cuts. Paramount executives have previously stated they plan to cut $6 billion by eliminating “duplicative operations” on “back office, finance, corporate, legal, technology, infrastructure, et cetera,” according to Chief Strategy Officer Andy Gordon. Both WBD and Paramount have already gone through thousands of job cuts in recent years.

There are also questions about culture and leadership. While Mark Thompson currently runs CNN, Bari Weiss is the editor-in-chief at CBS News and could plausibly have CNN added to her purview.

The Wall Street Journal reported in December that Paramount CEO David Ellison promised President Donald Trump he’d make sweeping changes at CNN if he gained control of the network. Three CNN employees who spoke with CNBC said there’s rampant fear among their colleagues about Weiss making dramatic changes to the cable network’s anchors and tone.

“Despite all the speculation you’ve read during this process, I’d suggest that you don’t jump to conclusions about the future until we know more,” Thompson wrote in a memo to employees Thursday.

CNN media reporter Brian Stelter noted CNN “is a highly profitable business, and it would be foolish for any owner to put that at risk.”

On the entertainment side, WBD employees fear there may be too many proverbial cooks in the kitchen, which could bog down creativity and innovation for both film and TV.

One WBD executive noted that Paramount’s President Jeff Shell, Chair of Direct to Consumer Cindy Holland and Chair of TV George Cheeks are all used to being senior leaders in their organizations. Shell was CEO of NBCUniversal. Cheeks was co-CEO of Paramount before it merged with Skydance. Holland was a top executive at Netflix, where she worked for 18 years.

How that mix meshes with WBD’s entertainment leadership group is an open question and could lead to culture clashes.

TNT Sports is run by Luis Silberwasser and has largely steered WBD toward younger audiences with its programming decisions and investments, including Bleacher Report and House of Highlights. CBS Sports, meanwhile, is driven by the demographics of those who watch CBS and has historically catered to an older audience. This could lead to culture clash, or the divisions could mesh nicely as complementary assets.

While Silberwasser will have to work with CBS Sports President David Berson on employee duplications, like every other department, there’s some reason for optimism in the sports division, because WBD and CBS have worked together for many years producing March Madness, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. That’s given the units some degree of familiarity with each other.

WBD also lost NBA rights last season. Combining with CBS’ robust portfolio of sports rights, including the NFL and the Masters, makes WBD a major player again in sports, even if it’s as a subsidiary of CBS.

One other repeated concern among employees is the $64 billion in debt coming as part of the $111 billion enterprise value for the deal. Several employees said servicing large debt loads has hindered WBD in recent years, and they feared this could lead to more of the same. Two employees noted there’s comfort being a part of a giant company like Netflix, with a market capitalization of more than $400 billion. Paramount Skydance’s market valuation is just $15 billion.

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Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos arrives at the White House on Feb. 26, 2026 in Washington, DC.

Andrew Leyden | Getty Images

Netflix is walking away from a deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery’s studio and streaming assets after the WBD board on Thursday deemed a revised bid by Paramount Skydance to be a superior offer.

Earlier this week, Paramount raised its bid to buy the entirety of WBD to $31 per share, up from $30 per share, all cash. It was the latest amendment to Paramount’s multiple offers in recent months — and since moving forward with a hostile bid to buy the company — and it’s now unseated a deal between WBD and Netflix to sell the legacy media company’s studio and streaming businesses for $27.75 per share.

Last week, Netflix granted WBD a seven-day waiver to reengage with Paramount, resulting in the higher bid. Paramount’s offer is for the entirety of WBD, including its pay TV networks, such as CNN, TBS and TNT.

Netflix had four business days to make changes to its own proposal in light of Paramount’s superior bid, the WBD board said in a statement Thursday.

Instead, the decision by the streaming giant to walk away puts a pin in a drawn-out saga that saw amended offers from both bidders.

Netflix stock spiked 10% in extended trading Thursday. Shares of Warner Bros. Discovery fell 2%.

“The transaction we negotiated would have created shareholder value with a clear path to regulatory approval,” Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters said in a statement. “However, we’ve always been disciplined, and at the price required to match Paramount Skydance’s latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive, so we are declining to match the Paramount Skydance bid.”

The latest Paramount bid included a $7 billion breakup fee in the event the proposed merger doesn’t win regulatory approval. The company also agreed to pay the $2.8 billion breakup fee that WBD would owe Netflix if that deal didn’t go through.

Sarandos told CNBC’s Julia Boorstin in an interview last week that Netflix granted WBD the waiver to reopen Paramount talks in order to give shareholders clarity.

“Paramount had been making a ton of noise, flooding the zone with confusion for shareholders … including floating all these hypothetical offers and talking directly to the shareholders and bypassing the Warner Bros. Discovery board,” Sarandos said at the time. “So we’ve given the opportunity to get those shareholders exactly what they deserve, which is complete clarity and certainty.”

However, Sarandos had fallen short of commenting on whether Netflix would up its own offer to match a revised Paramount bid.

“Warner Bros. is a world-class organization, and we want to thank David Zaslav, Gunnar Wiedenfels, Bruce Campbell, Brad Singer and the WBD Board for running a fair and rigorous process,” the Netflix co-CEOs said in their statement.

“We believe we would have been strong stewards of Warner Bros.’ iconic brands, and that our deal would have strengthened the entertainment industry and preserved and created more production jobs in the U.S.,” they said. “But this transaction was always a ‘nice to have’ at the right price, not a ‘must have’ at any price.”

Read more about the Paramount-Netflix battle for WBD

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An aerial view of the Paramount logo on the water tower at Paramount Studios on Feb. 23, 2026 in Los Angeles, California.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Warner Bros. Discovery on Tuesday said it had received a higher takeover offer from Paramount Skydance and will review the new bid under the terms of its existing deal with Netflix.

Last week, WBD announced it would re-engage Paramount in deal talks under a seven-day waiver from Netflix. WBD and Netflix have an agreement to sell the legacy media group’s studio and streaming businesses to the streamer. Paramount is seeking to buy the entirety of WBD.

“Following engagement with PSKY during the seven-day limited waiver period, we received a revised PSKY proposal to acquire WBD, which we are reviewing in consultation with our financial and legal advisors,” WBD said in a statement. “We will update our shareholders following the Board’s review. The Netflix merger agreement remains in effect, and the Board continues to recommend in favor of the Netflix transaction. WBD shareholders are advised not to take any action at this time with respect to the amended PSKY tender offer.”

Paramount in a statement confirmed it had submitted a revised bid and said it will continue with its previously announced tender offer while the WBD board reviews both deals.

If WBD deems the new Paramount offer superior, Netflix will have four days to improve its previously agreed-upon bid. Netflix agreed to acquire WBD’s studio and streaming assets for $27.75 per share in December, valuing the assets around $72 billion, with a total enterprise value of approximately $82.7 billion.

Paramount subsequently launched a hostile tender offer to WBD shareholders for $30 per share for all of WBD, which includes linear cable networks such as CNN, TBS, HGTV and TNT and digital assets including Bleacher Report and House of Highlights.

If WBD concludes Paramount’s new offer is superior and Netflix doesn’t alter its bid, Netflix will receive a $2.8 billion breakup fee. Paramount has agreed to fund that fee as part of a previously altered hostile bid.

A combined Paramount-WBD would bring together HBO Max with Paramount+ along with merging two of the five largest movie studios by revenue — Warner Bros. and Paramount Skydance Studios. It would also put CNN and CBS News under one ownership structure.

Both the Netflix-WBD deal and a potential Paramount-WBD merger would need U.S. and European regulatory approval for completion, and both deals have raised antitrust concerns among critics.

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