Cost-Cutting Ordered For Warner Bros. Discovery After Ending 2023 In Debt
Warner Bros. Discovery will be undergoing some financial shifting in 2024 and it's from the order of their CEO David Zazlov.
Bloomsberg is reporting that Zazlov has told the WBD brass to look for viable cost-cutting opportunities so the company can hit its financial targets over the course of the next couple of years.
This includes the possibility of layoffs, something in which WBD had done over the last year. The company laid off 2,000 employees through 2023. By the end of the year, WBD was $44.2 billion with $4.3 billion cash-on-hand.
According to sources from Bloomsberg, Warner Bros. Discovery streaming department alone contains a great deal of the budget, adding up to over hundred of millions of dollars. A huge portion of that is focused in the marketing and technology work that's involved.
Warner Bros. Discovery could be seeing some major changes forthcoming as they were unable to negotiate a new deal with the National Basketball Association within their exclusive window. Being a live sports entity, NBA will be a hot ticket to acquire from competitors with several names mentioned to be in the mix including NBCUniversal and Amazon.
The fact that the NBA could be gone from WBD's catalogue initially seemed promising for AEW, but if the company lieutenants feel AEW isn't delivering as a return on investment, "cost-cutting" may be applied. to their weekly pro wrestling product.
NBC will be sitting pretty with a big live sports entity as not only will SmackDown be heading to USA Network in 2025, but RAW will also be sticking around until they make the leap to Netflix.
