Discovery Communications chief executive David Zaslav has said the strategy for the media and entertainment company’s international sports channel, Eurosport, is for it to “always be profitable”.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Zaslav said the aim is to drive affiliate-fee growth with sports investments – an area in which he said Eurosport has made “strong progress”.
Zaslav said sports-rights deals have been agreed at low- to mid-digit fee increases, but added that Discovery had opted to stay away from football in general due to rights-fee inflation in the sport. He said the trend for spiralling football rights fees had made “all of our other sports rights more affordable for us".
Zaslav was speaking after Discovery reported a two-per-cent increase in revenues to $6.497bn (€6.055bn) for 2016 following better-than-expected results in the fourth quarter. Diluted earnings per share increased by 24 per cent to $1.96.