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David Berson, the head of CBS Sports, will take over the broader sports operations of Skydance once it completes its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery., and that company’s top sports executive, Luis Silberwasser,
will exit.
“I have tremendous respect for our leadership and for the leaders of CBS Sports, who are great colleagues and friends. I fully support the decision and will do everything I can to be of assistance during the transition. I believe in the strategy ahead and, above all, in the people who will carry this work forward,” Silberwasser said in a memo to staffers Monday “The success of this organization has always been about the talent, commitment and character of its people, and I know those qualities will continue to define it in the years ahead.”
Berson will take the reins of a merged portfolio that includes not only CBS Sports’ NFL and Masters golf rights, but a Warner package that includes NHL and Major League Baseball games along with the U.S. rights to the French Open. The merger means that the NCAA March Madness college basketball championship will be under a single company’s oversight for the first time in years. In the recent past, CBS and Warner have shared those rights. CBS decided to open the games to Warner in 2010 as fees grew too expensive for the company to handle on its own.
Warner has been entrepreneurial in recent years, merging sports with reality-competitions, such a a new “Dunkman” league and investing in emerging sports such as the Unrivaled womens-sports league.
Berson has supervised many of CBS Sports’ alignments with the streaming hub Paramount+ and has been involved in rights negotiations for another prized property: PGA Tour Golf. He has also been involved with the CBS Sports Network on cable and talent signings such as those for Tony Romo, JJ Watt, and Nate Burleson.
Now he will wield significantly more clout with major sports leagues and organizations. CBS and Warner each controlled a small sports portfolio. The combined passel will give Skydance more leverage with big leagues and smaller entities alike.
Silberwasser said he had left the Warner assets in good shape. During his tenure, Warner worked to assemble a new array of sports properties to fill in for the absence of the NBA, which moved its rights to Amazon and NBCUniversal after Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav protested the hike in rights fees that would be put in place under a new contract and unnerved NBA officials.
“Together, we added major sports properties such as the College Football Playoff, Roland-Garros, NASCAR, Big 12 football and basketball, BIG EAST basketball, the FIFA Club World Cup, the FIBA World Cup and more. We also pursued distinctive partnerships and formats, including our media partnership with and investment in Unrivaled, the launch of Dunkman and our latest move into professional live boxing,” Silberwasser said. “We also expanded the reach of our live sports content by launching sports on HBO Max. Over the last year, we have seen significant audience growth across every platform and sports property in our portfolio,”
