Plaintiffs Claim Securities Fraud in Class-Action Suit Over NBA Rights

Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) and its top executives were engaged in "straightforward ... securities fraud" when they concealed from investors how important NBA rights were to its revenues, class-action plaintiffs said Monday as they opposed the company's motion to dismiss their suit. While WBD argues that the market already knew the value of the NBA rights, the matching clause terms in its contract with the NBA was less "potent" than the company had made it out to be in public statements, the plaintiffs said. WBD CEO David Zaslav and CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels are also defendants in the suit, filed in November at the U.S. District Court for Southern New York (docket 1:24-cv-09027). The plaintiffs are suing over the financial hit WBD took in 2024 when it lost NBA rights to Amazon.