As TNT Sports parent company Warner Bros. Discovery prepares to split into two entities, the compensation for top executives David Zaslav and Gunnar Wiedenfels is being reworked substantially to respond to heavy shareholder pushback.

WBD said that it will “significantly reduce” the target annual compensation of Zaslav, the company’s CEO, after his $51.9 million total for 2024 recently received a firm rebuke from investors—particularly as WBD continues to see issues with a lagging stock performance and is still working through the loss of its live NBA rights. Wiedenfels, the current CFO, also signed a new employment agreement that retools his pay in preparation for the new corporate structure. 

In a newly completed agreement, Zaslav will keep his base salary at $3 million, but an annual cash bonus that reached $23.9 million in 2024 will fall to a new target of $6 million, with that bonus payout capped at $12 million and based on the achievement of performance goals. Zaslav’s stock awards that were $23.1 million last year will fall to $15.5 million in the first year of the new deal, and $7.5 million annually thereafter. 

To help retain Zaslav, one of the highest-paid executives in the media business, in the lower pay structure, WBD’s board also approved a “one-time inducement” that includes an award of nearly 21 million stock options vesting in a complex formula based on time and performance measures. 

Wiedenfels, meanwhile, will get a base salary of $2.5 million, an annual cash bonus that will cap at $17.5 million, and equity awards targeted at $16 million per year. His bonus and stock awards, too, are tied specifically to performance goals and will have some vesting requirements.

Responding to Feedback

WBD said in a filing with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission that the new compensation agreements will “address stockholder feedback and preferences with respect to CEO compensation structure and foster a stronger pay-for-performance alignment.” The company added that it took into account several other factors, such as “peer group practices and benchmarks.”

The reworked compensation agreements mark another major move as WBD plans to become two independent, publicly traded companies beginning in mid-2026: a Streaming & Studios operation led by Zaslav that will include WBD’s film and TV productions and its streaming operations, and a separate Global Networks business led by Wiedenfels that will include TNT Sports in the U.S., Bleacher Report, CNN, Discovery, and free-to-air channels in Europe. 

The Global Networks group will have the core of TNT Sports, but Wiedenfels acknowledged last week that the long-term streaming future of the sports programming is still unsettled and will be determined “over time.” That effort could become complicated, however, as Zaslav also said that sports “hasn’t been a real driver” for streaming consumption on Max, which is about to revert to its prior HBO Max name. Network sources said there is a process already beginning to develop a refined digital strategy for TNT Sports in the forthcoming, separated structure.

New PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp isn’t making any promises about brokering a peace deal with LIV Golf, but he is staying open-minded.

“My view is I come in with a pretty clean sheet of paper,” Rolapp said at the Travelers Championship on Tuesday after his hire was officially announced earlier in the morning.

Rolapp will be the PGA Tour’s top executive, as commissioner Jay Monahan will hand off his day-to-day responsibilities and step down from his role after his contract expires following the 2026 season. 

Rolapp, who went to Harvard Business School with LIV CEO Scott O’Neil, said the existence of a rival league is a “complex situation that’s probably something I should learn more about before I speak.” He said he is “not close enough to any of those discussions” to break down in depth yet.

However, Rolapp agrees that a solution is needed. “The fans have been pretty clear,” he said. “They want to see the best golfers competing against each other.”

Cash Flow

Rolapp is becoming CEO of both the PGA Tour, which will continue to operate as a 501(c)(6) nonprofit organization, and the for-profit entity PGA Tour Enterprises, which in 2024 received a $1.5 billion investment (that could be doubled to $3 billion) from the Strategic Sports Group—a conglomeration of professional sports franchise owners.

That initial investment led to players receiving $930 million worth of equity stakes in PGA Tour Enterprises, but there’s more money to go around. “Where we deploy that capital, I have ideas,” Rolapp said. “I don’t think I want to share them now, but that’s going to be part of the job.” 

Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, who is part of SSG, led the PGA Tour CEO search committee. “I think they saw what I saw, which is a great opportunity—getting the right alignment and the right capital to do that, that’s what really drew me to it,” Rolapp said. “It’s an investor group that is experienced in sports. They’re smart.”

Goodell Succession Rumors

Rolapp, 52, joins the PGA Tour from the NFL, where he was seen as a potential successor to commissioner Roger Goodell, most recently serving as chief media and business officer.  

“I loved working at the NFL,” Rolapp said. “I’ve learned a ton from Roger. He’s been my boss for a long time and a mentor for a long time.”

But Rolapp isn’t worried about the NFL’s future anymore. “A lot of people focus on who the next commissioner is,” he said. “I don’t. I focus on the job I have. I was just really drawn to the opportunity here.”

For now, at least, Rolapp is all in on the PGA Tour. “When you’re in the seat I’ve been in for a while, you get to look at a lot of different opportunities, and they don’t come up—unique ones don’t come up—very often,” he said. “This one did, and it was a chance to really do something different and help grow a game and a sport that I love.”

There has been no shortage of drama or star power in the first five games of the Stanley Cup Final, with three of the games between the Oilers and Panthers going into overtime, and the matchup boasting top talents such as Edmonton’s Connor McDavid and Florida’s Aleksander Barkov. Audiences, however, remain somewhat indifferent, particularly in the U.S. 

TNT Sports parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, already in the midst of a larger transition, said that U.S. viewership for the series through Game 5 has averaged about 2.5 million viewers, down 28% from a year ago and down 5% from 2023, when the network last carried the Stanley Cup Final. 

Viewer attrition in the U.S. was likely compared to last year, when Disney carried the event on both ABC and ESPN. That exposure on broadcast with a significant emphasis on streaming contrasts significantly from the cable-led presentation on TNT and truTV, joined by a simulcast on Max. That rights rotation will continue through the 2027–28 season. 

Still, the current Stanley Cup Final results are something of a surprise given not only the inherent factors, but the momentum the NHL saw earlier this season in events such as the wildly successful 4 Nations Face-Off.  

The U.S. situation for the Stanley Cup Final also contrasts notably from Canada, where Sportsnet and CBC have averaged 3.8 million viewers through Game 5, up 2% from a year ago. In a country of nearly 42 million people, that total is equivalent to a U.S. audience of about 31 million. That latter figure is on par with what the NFL draws for a wild-card playoff game. 

Before the start of the Stanley Cup Final, commissioner Gary Bettman dismissed any viewership concerns.

“You’ve got some in the media saying, ‘Well, the ratings are going to be soft in the U.S.’ They’re going to be great in Canada, they’ll be fine in the U.S.,” Bettman said on NHL Network Radio. 

The Panthers currently lead the series three games to two, but should the Oilers win Game 6 on Tuesday and force a deciding game, the entire complexion of the series viewership will change considerably. Last year’s Game 7 between the two teams drew an average U.S. audience of 7.7 million, the largest total for any NHL game in five years. That final figure, more than twice the average level of the first five games of the series, also elevated the final average considerably.