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In a conference call Monday, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said U.S. sports have not been a major driver for HBO Max subscriptions.
Zaslav said it will be up to Gunnar Wiedenfels and his team to decide where to license TNT Sports rights in the future.
One possibility for Wiedenfels could be to merge TNT Sports with another media company, such as the soon-to-be spun-off Versant.

David Zaslav attends the world premiere of “The Flash”, in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, U.S., June 12, 2023. REUTERS/Mike Blake
Mike Blake | Reuters

Earlier this year, Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive Officer David Zaslav ended his company’s long relationship with the National Basketball Association. Now, he may be setting the stage to end his relationship with U.S. sports, altogether.
WBD announced Monday it’s splitting itself into two companies — a concept CNBC first reported had picked up steam in April. One company, temporarily called Streaming and Studios, will consist of Warner Bros. Television, Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, DC Studios, HBO and HBO Max. The other, currently dubbed Global Networks, will be the rest of the company’s assets: legacy cable networks, TNT Sports, digital products and free-to-air channels in Europe.

Zaslav will be the CEO of Streaming and Studios. Gunnar Wiedenfels, the current Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Financial Officer, will become the CEO of Global Networks.
The divorce raises the question of where live sports right held by TNT will land without Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming portfolio as part of the same company.
During a conference call Monday, Zaslav said it will be up to Wiedenfels and his team to decide where they’d like to license TNT Sports programming to the Streaming and Studios business — or anyone else —in the future.
Currently, all of TNT Sports appear on HBO Max, Warner Bros. Discovery’s flagship streaming service. Zaslav said U.S. sports haven’t been a major driver of HBO Max sign-ups, suggesting that it may make sense for TNT Sports to consciously uncouple from the streaming service down the road.
“Inside the U.S., sports have been less critical,” Zaslav said on the call with investors Monday. “It’s viewed, but it hasn’t been a real driver for us. So it will continue to be on HBO Max, but the Global Networks business will evaluate over time where the best place for that is.”

HBO Max will continue to license sports for existing deals. Still, Wiedenfels will have options on how to monetize TNT’s future streaming and digital sports rights. He could strike a licensing deal with a different media company for the live sports that appear on the Turner networks (TNT, TBS and TruTV), such as the NCAA’s March Madness, the French Open, NASCAR, Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League.
“The U.S. sports rights will reside at the Global Networks, and its management team will determine how best to monetize the streaming and digital rights over time,” said Wiedenfels. “Internationally, sports will largely coexist, both on linear and streaming, as they do today.”
Or, he could decide to merge TNT Sports with another entity, such as the forthcoming Comcast spinout, Versant. Mark Lazarus, Versant’s CEO, told CNBC Sport last month he was interested in bidding on sports rights to gain distribution heft with pay-TV operators. Acquiring TNT Sports could be a major step in that direction.
If Wiedenfels opts for consolidation, he will have to weigh the tax effects of selling off assets after the separation takes place. While Warner Bros. Discovery noted the split is tax-free, Wiedenfels emphasized on Monday’s call that transactions could begin as soon as the separation occurs, which is expected by mid-2026.
“On the tax side, I said this earlier, I want to be absolutely clear: Once this deal closes, both companies are going to be free and clear,” Wiedenfels said. “There is no minimum time.”
A spokesperson for Versant declined to comment.
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of CNBC. Versant will become the parent company of CNBC when the spinout is complete.

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The ways in which humans can be triggered into making irrational decisions are many and varied. Investors make higher bids for stocks when the sun is shining. If you add paper packaging to a product wrapped in plastic, people will perceive it as being more environmentally friendly than the same product without paper. The act of sharing an article makes people feel more knowledgeable: people who read an article on investing and share it are likely to take more risk in investment decisions than those who read the same article but do not pass it on. It’s a wonder the species has done as well as it has. More

Chipotle is launching Adobo Ranch, its first dip since introducing queso blanco in 2020.
The burrito chain’s sales have struggled this year as diners pull back their restaurant spending.
Ranch has overtaken ketchup in popularity, based on U.S. retail sales data from NIQ.

Chipotle Mexican Grill’s new Adobo Ranch dip
Source: Chipotle Mexican Grill

Chipotle Mexican Grill is hoping that Americans’ love for ranch will boost its sales.
On June 17, the burrito chain is launching Adobo Ranch, a spicier take on the iconic condiment that has transcended salads to adorn pizza, chicken wings and chips. The menu item is Chipotle’s first new dip since queso blanco, which launched in 2020.

The debut comes as Chipotle tries to recover from a rough start to the year. In the first quarter, the company reported its first same-store sales decline since 2020. Executives cited a pullback from consumers who had become more concerned about the economy.
The company also lowered the top end of its outlook for full-year same-store sales growth and said traffic wouldn’t grow until the second half of the year.
Shares of Chipotle have fallen 12% this year, dragging its market cap down to $71 billion.
But Adobo Ranch could help to boost the company’s sales if it draws cautious diners back to the chain’s restaurants.
The dipping sauce is made with adobo peppers, sour cream and herbs and spices, according to the company. Adding Adobo Ranch to an order will cost an extra 75 cents.
Ranch outsells ketchup, although NIQ retail sales data shows that mayo still holds the top spot as the favorite condiment of U.S. consumers. More

Sports agency network Elevate has created a $500 million fund to help colleges and universities fund projects that could create long-term growth.
Many schools are looking for new revenue opportunities as the college athletics landscape rapidly changes.
Elevate counts more than 60 schools as clients.

STATE COLLEGE, PA – DECEMBER 21: Drew Shelton #66 of the Penn State Nittany Lions before a game between SMU and Penn State at Beaver Stadium on December 21, 2024 in State College, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Roger Wimmer/ISI Photos/Getty Images)
Roger Wimmer/isi Photos | Getty Images Sport | Getty Images

As the college athletics landscape undergoes seismic changes, Elevate on Monday announced a $500 million fund to help universities create long-term growth through strategic investments.
The global sports and marketing agency has partnered with private equity firm Velocity Capital Management and Texas Permanent School Fund Corporation to provide schools with money and resources to develop revenue-generating projects.

On Friday, a judge approved a settlement that will require individual schools to pay up to $20.5 million to student-athletes. As they awaited this decision, many schools have been exploring new ways to generate revenue.
Elevate works with colleges and universities to help them understand what projects they should pursue and how to monetize them.
“In our minds, the benefit of having access to capital and robust services that these schools can tap into as they think about professionalizing their rights, is a true differentiator,” said Al Guido, chairman and CEO of Elevate, who also serves as president of the San Francisco 49ers.
Schools will use the capital for infrastructure and commercial projects ranging from modernizing venues, expanding premium seating and enhancing multimedia and digital rights and to investing in name, image and likeness platforms for athletes.
“Schools will utilize the new capital to create new premium experience spaces where they can monetize those tickets at a higher price point. The main focus is increasing the fan experience and maximizing revenue,” said Jonathan Marks, chief business officer for college at Elevate.

Elevate said it has already closed two eight-figure deals with Power Four schools. It hopes the investment fund will appeal to its 60 other university clients, which include schools like UCLA, Alabama, Penn State, Notre Dame and Florida.
“A lot of these schools have small staffs, and so if we can come in and provide that additional firepower and the data and insights and support, we can help them generate a much higher return on that capital.” said Marks.
College spending on sports infrastructure has ramped up dramatically, with 58 stadiums and 27 arena projects scheduled to conclude in 2025, according to Sports Business Journal. College stadium projects aren’t expected to slow down in 2026, with spending expected to exceed $3 billion. More

Warner Bros. Discovery plans to split into two public companies by next year.
WBD will separate into a streaming and studios company, which will include its movie properties and streaming service HBO Max, and a global networks company, which will include CNN, TNT Sports and Discovery.
CEO David Zaslav will lead the streaming and studios company. Current CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels will become CEO of the global networks business.

Warner Bros. Discovery plans to split into two public companies by next year, the media giant announced Monday, the latest upheaval in the industry as consumers transition from cable to streaming.
WBD will separate into a streaming and studios company, which will include its movie properties and streaming service HBO Max, and a global networks company, which will include CNN, TNT Sports and Discovery, among other businesses.

CEO David Zaslav will lead the streaming and studios company. Current CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels will become CEO of the global networks business.
Warner Bros. Discovery expects to complete the split by the middle of 2026.
“By operating as two distinct and optimized companies in the future, we are empowering these iconic brands with the sharper focus and strategic flexibility they need to compete most effectively in today’s evolving media landscape,” Zaslav said in a release.
The news confirms earlier reporting by CNBC and others that WBD was considering such a split. In December, the company announced restructuring that many saw as a precursor to a full break.
It also comes as cable giant Comcast is in the process of spinning out its portfolio of cable networks, including CNBC, into a new publicly traded company called Versant. That separation, announced last year, inspired speculation that the media industry could soon see heightened consolidation.

Warner Bros. Discovery shares were up more than 9% in premarket trading Monday.
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of CNBC. Versant would be the parent company of CNBC under the proposed cable spinout.

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President Donald Trump has long touted the importance of manufacturing jobs in America.
But the U.S. aviation industry is facing a wave of retirements for aircraft technicians and other skilled aviation workers.
Airlines and aerospace companies are trying to get more younger people interested in the field.

LAFAYETTE, Ind. — President Donald Trump has said he wants to bolster manufacturing jobs and other technical employment in the United States. But in the aviation industry, finding skilled workers to make airplanes and engines — and maintaining those jobs for years to come — has been a struggle.
The average age of a certified aircraft mechanic in the U.S. is 54, and 40% of them are over the age of 60, according to a joint 2024 report from the Aviation Technician Education Council and consulting firm Oliver Wyman, which cites Federal Aviation Administration data. The U.S. will be short 25,000 aircraft technicians by 2028, according to the report.

“A lot of them were hired on in the ’80s and early ’90s. You just start doing some math and you start saying at some point they’re going to retire,” said American Airlines Chief Operating Officer David Seymour, who oversees the carrier’s more than 6,000 daily flights.
To boost their ranks, airlines and big manufacturers of airplanes and their thousands of components are trying to get more younger people interested in the field.

‘Lost a lot of talent’

Technicians work on an engine at GE Aerospace’s engine shop in Lafayette, Indiana.
Leslie Josephs/CNBC

The industry was already facing a retirement wave when Covid hit, and companies cut or offered buyouts to experienced workers — from those who build aircraft to those who maintain them to keep flying.
“People forget that the aerospace industry was in a pretty serious ramp at the time pre-Covid. And then frankly, of course overnight we went from ramping to zero demand over time. And so we lost a lot of talent,” said Christian Meisner, GE Aerospace’s chief human resources officer.
GE, along with its French joint venture partner Safran, makes the bestselling engines that power Boeing and Airbus top-selling jetliners, and has been ramping up hiring, though it is also dependent on a web of smaller suppliers that have also been getting back up to speed since the pandemic.

Meisner said that the company has a strong retention rate and that some employees earn their FAA licenses to work on airplane engines or airframes on the job. At GE’s engine plant in Lafayette, Indiana, about an hour outside of Indianapolis, base pay averages between $80,000 and $90,000 a year, based on qualifications and experience, the company said.

A worker at GE Aerospace’s Lafayette, Ind. engine plant
Leslie Josephs/CNBC

Median pay for aircraft technicians or mechanics was $79,140 a year in the U.S. in 2024, compared with a nationwide median income of $49,500, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The agency projects 13,400 job openings in the field each year over the next decade.
American’s Seymour said that with new pay raises, technicians could make $130,000 a year at the top of their pay scale in nine years at the carrier.
While many experts don’t expect jobs that have been shipped abroad like clothing manufacturing to come back to the U.S., high-value sectors tend to pay much more and are more likely to stick around. But hiring can still be difficult in a sector that is seen as politically important and symbolic to the country’s economic power.
The impending worker shortages aren’t just for those who repair aircraft and engines. A shortfall of air traffic controllers has also stifled airline growth and raised concerns about safety in recent years. The Trump administration has said it will raise wages and ramp up hiring to try to reverse yearslong shortfalls.
Manufacturing is about 9% of U.S. employment but “we all have a bit of a fetish with manufacturing because we focus on it more and than other sectors,” said Gordon Hanson, a professor of urban policy at Harvard University.

Students at Aviation High School in Queens, N.Y.
Leslie Josephs/CNBC

The U.S. unemployment rate in May held steady at 4.2%.
One problem with manufacturing jobs, Hanson said, is that workers aren’t very geographically mobile, and if factories reopen or hiring ramps up, that could make it harder to attract employees from other places.
“You’re asking the local labor market to supply workers,” Hanson added.

Read more CNBC airline news

Wages for technicians that repair aircraft at airlines, as well as big manufacturers like Boeing, have gone up in recent years, with skilled workers still in short supply and travel and airplane demand robust. But some workers said that’s not enough.
“We need to increase wages,” said Sarah MacLeod, executive director of the Aeronautical Repair Station Association. Most of the companies the association works with are small businesses. 
She warned that the “entire world is going to feel this workforce shortage. You already can’t get your houses built. You already can’t do XYZ. I think and pray that aerospace can actually lead the recovery of that.”

Looking to the future

Students work on an airplane engine at Aviation High School in Queens.
Leslie Josephs/CNBC

Getting FAA licenses can take years, but the reward can be high. Some students are considering forgoing traditional four-year college degrees straight out of high school to get into the industry.
“I’m thinking about going to college, but it’s whichever really comes first. If they give me an opportunity to go to the airlines, I’d like to do that,” said Sam Mucciardi, a senior at Aviation High School in Queens, New York.
The public school offers its roughly 2,000 students the option to stay on for a fifth year to earn their FAA licenses with training at the school.
“I stay late after school every day to work on the planes and, probably a little bit too much … but I still really enjoy it,” Mucciardi said. “That’s what I put my all my heart into.”
The school, which has been teaching students how to maintain aircraft since the 1930s, is fielding more demand from airlines in recent years.
“After a program like ours, typically you’d go to the regional airlines first, like the Endeavors, the Envoys,” said Aviation High School Principal Steven Jackson. “Lately, because of the huge technician need, there’s been more students going directly into American, Delta, United, but you have the whole range.” He said the school received about 5,000 applications this year from students.

A student at the hangar of Aviation High School in Queens, N.Y.
Leslie Josephs/CNBC

Students at the school learn at the campus in the Sunnyside section of Queens but also at other facilities at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Seymour said American has teamed up with high schools before, but is now going even younger and working with some junior highs to raise awareness about the career path.
“It is getting into the high schools and showing that a career in aerospace as an engineer or frankly, on a production floor, is not your grandparents’ manufacturing. It is high tech,” GE’s Meisner said. “You’re talking about laser-guided machine, precision machining operations, exotic coatings and metals.”
Krystal Godinez, who has lived in the Lafayette area for about 14 years, graduated last summer from GE’s first apprentice program class at the facility after about two years. She said she previously worked in the automotive industry.
“I feel like what I do here … definitely does matter. It’s like taking all those extra steps, make sure everything is correct,” she said. “We’re there to kind of keep people safe out there and make them feel safe.”
American’s Seymour was optimistic that younger people are changing their tune.
“There was a period of time when people said ‘I want a computer, I want tech,'” he said. “There are people who want to get their hands dirty.”
— CNBC’s Erin Black contributed to this article.

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A YEAR AGO, when Apple used a jamboree at its home in Silicon Valley to unveil its artificial-intelligence (AI) strategy, grandly known as Apple Intelligence, it was a banner occasion. The following day the firm’s value soared by more than $200bn—one of the biggest single-day leaps of any company in American history. The excitement was fuelled by hopes that generative AI would enable Apple to transform the iPhone into a digital assistant—in effect, Siri with a brain—helping to resuscitate flagging phone sales. Twelve months later, that excitement has turned into almost existential dread. More

Starting in February, Capital One Venture X and Venture X Business cardholders won’t be able to automatically bring a guest into the credit card company’s network of airport lounges.
Instead, those customers will have to spend at least $75,000 in a year to bring a guest or pay per guest, per visit.
The move follows similar measures by American Express and other companies to combat overcrowding at airport lounges.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Airplane tickets are getting cheaper, but it’s getting more expensive to bring your family to an airport lounge.
Capital One is the latest company to limit access to booming airport lounges to combat overcrowding.

Starting Feb. 1, Venture X and Venture X Business cardholders will no longer be able to automatically take a guest into lounges or bring authorized second card users.
They will instead have to pay $125 annually for each additional cardholder to keep their lounge access, $45 per adult guest per visit and $25 per guest 17 or younger. The $125 fee also includes second cardholder access to a network of Priority Pass lounges.
“As airport lounges continue to grow in popularity across the industry, we’ve seen our customers increasingly encounter wait times to enter them,” Capital One said in a statement. “It is important to us that we maintain a great airport lounge experience for our Venture X and Venture X Business customers, while continuing to deliver best-in-class premium travel cards at an accessible price point.”
Primary cardholders will have to spend at least $75,000 per calendar year to bring up to two complimentary free guests to Capital One lounges and one guest to Capital One Landings, smaller lounges built for travelers who tend to spend less time at the airport, like those heading to short flights.
The $75,000 spending requirement for complimentary guests matches what American Express announced two years ago, also a measure to minimize crowding and keeping the clubs feeling exclusive.

Read more CNBC airline news

Credit card companies have ramped up their airport lounge networks in recent years, opening new locations to handle demand. And airport lounge access has been a central perk attached to rewards cards, which generally come with an annual fee.
The Venture X card, which launched in 2021, is $395 a year, less than the $695 a year American Express charges for its Platinum card or the $550 JPMorgan Chase charges for the Chase Sapphire Reserve, both of which come with airport lounges.

“When it comes to lounges, Capital One is a challenger brand; they’re an underdog,” said Henry Harteveldt, founder of Atmosphere Research Group.
Capital One has lounges at Denver International Airport, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, Washington Dulles International Airport and Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas. It plans to open one this year at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and one of its Landings at LaGuardia Airport.
But the new restrictions show Capital One isn’t immune to its popularity leading to big crowds.
“Like Amex, like Chase, these lounges have become victims of their own success,” Harteveldt said. “No lounge operator wants them to be as overrun as the public areas of the airport.”
Airlines have also raised prices to access airport lounges and built larger ones to accommodate the influx.
Delta Air Lines, for example, has made sweeping changes to its lounge access policies, like getting rid of unlimited visits in favor of annual caps.
And last summer, Delta unveiled its first Delta One lounge, dedicated for customers in its highest class of cabin. It plans to open a new one in Seattle later this month.
American Airlines and United Airlines have also expanded their airport lounges and opened new top-tier ones for customers traveling in premium classes on long-haul flights.

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