Recently named WarnerMedia news and sports chairman Jeff Zucker said Tuesday that Turner Sports is in "terrific" shape and that he views both news and sports as similar with regards to his programming approach.

“I think news and sports are very much the same in the sense that they’re both about human beings and drama and stories,” Zucker, who oversees CNN, told reporters attending CBS and Turner’s annual NCAA 'March Madness' college basketball tournament press breakfast. “I’ve personally gone back and forth between the two, and I think that’s why I’ve always tried to bring the same approach to both. It’s about telling a great story.”

Zucker, who was named to the new post last week amid the recent departures of Turner president David Levy — who previously oversaw Turner Sports — and HBO chairman Richard Plepler, said that Turner Sports is well positioned with its combination of strong linear cable network outlets such as TNT and TBS, marquee sports packages including deals with the NBA and Major League Baseball, and its digital streaming presence with Bleacher Report Live.

Related: WarnerMedia Plots OTT Plan Amid Departures 

“It's the combination of the three that will continue to be the strategy, and we want to make sure we’re playing in all three [areas].” he added.

Zucker also wouldn’t rule out partnering with CBS to go after more high-profile league sports packages in the future, something that CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus also endorsed.

“We partnered with Turner on the PGA championship for a number of years and that worked out really well,” McManus told reporters. “We’re open to doing partnerships if it makes sense for both partners. There’s nothing specific on the books, but I could see us teaming with Turner on other properties.”

Zucker, who said he launched his television career working as a producer on NBC’s 1988 Olympics coverage, said that he sees additional growth for Turner Sports in new, emerging sports that will require some business development. “The combination of the linear channels as well as Bleacher Report Live gives us the opportunity to foster growth there,” he said. 

Turner Sports will televise regular and postseason games from the upstart Alliance of American Football League as part of a multi-year distribution agreement between the two parties.

TNT and Turner’s Bleacher Report Live streaming service will air live games from the eight-team league -- which launches the week after Sunday’s (Feb. 3) Super Bowl. TNT will air the Feb. 16 Salt Lake Stallions vs Birmingham Iron game, part of its deal to air one regular season and one playoff game each year during the length of the agreement, according to network officials.

B/R Live will air weekly regular season games, beginning Feb. 23 with the Arizona Hotshots vs. Salt Lake Stallions contest. In addition to live game coverage, all Alliance games distributed through B/R Live will be available on demand, with highlight rights extending across B/R platforms.

Turner Sports joins CBS Sports in distributing Alliance games. CBS broadcast network will air the championship game, while CBS Sports Network will carry at least one game per week.

“We’re looking forward to this exciting partnership with The Alliance – including working closely with its leadership team of Charlie Ebersol, Bill Polian, Hines Ward and Troy Polamalu – and share the enthusiasm and forward-thinking vision being applied to this newly-formed league,” said Lenny Daniels, President of Turner Sports in a statement. “This is a true partnership and The Alliance will have our full support in the distribution of its live game coverage and content across the Turner Sports portfolio.”

The Alliance of American Football will play a 10-week regular season schedule, with a four-team playoff format and a championship game to determine the league’s top team. The league’s inaugural eight teams include: Atlanta Legends, Birmingham Iron, Memphis Express, Orlando Apollos, Arizona Hotshots, Salt Lake Stallions, San Antonio Commanders, and San Diego Fleet. 

The now infamous technical glitches that ultimately made the Tiger Woods-Phil Mickelson Black Friday pay-per-view golf event a free-per-view event weren't a total bogey for the industry.

Yes, the match failed to deliver reported millions of dollars from PPV buys for the category after most PPV distributors offered refunds to viewers purchasing the event due to OTT streaming service Bleacher Report Live's decision to put the $19.95 event in the clear for its subscribers after suffering through technical issues delivering the live golf match. 

But the silver lining for the Turner Sports-distributed event-- which pitted two of the most popular and successful golfers of this generation against one another -- is that it ended up generating better than expected PPV orders from both the traditional cable and digital streaming side, according to sources close to the situation. No official PPV buy tally for the event was available at press time. 

While the PPV numbers for Tiger vs Phil will not come anywhere near that of 2015's industry record- setting Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight, industry observers say the performance does bodes well for the much-needed expansion of the PPV event category beyond boxing and mixed martial arts in terms of the category's ability to attract viewers to a non-ring sports event.

Traditional cable, satellite and telco distributors did not report any technical glitches offering the event, in which Mickelson defeated Woods in 22 holes of golf competition. Nevertheless, most distributors provided rebates to consumers after Turner Sports’ upstart Bleacher Report Live streamed the event free to its subscribers due to technical glitches that kept paying viewers from watching the golf competition.

The streaming of live pay-per-view sports events is still in an infancy stage, so inevitably technical problems can and will occur. PPV event distributors say a small percentage of overall PPV buys for big events are generated from streaming services, but when technological issues pop up during marquee events like Tiger vs. Phil or last year’s Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor mega fight, the category’s growing pains are magnified.

Unfortunately, Bleacher Report Live’s glitch and Turner’s decision to pull the event from behind B/R Live’s pay wall -- and the subsequent refunds offered by cable, satellite and telco distributors -- all but wiped out any chance of the event generating significant revenue from PPV transactions.

Once the smoke clears however, the PPV industry might eventually view the Tiger vs Phil PPV event as a success in bringing new viewers to category. That will hopefully encourage Turner Sports and other content producers to consider offering unique and potentially attractive sports events to the PPV category. 

The recent launch of new direct-to-consumer sports services is quickly changing the game, as professional leagues and other sports entities contemplate playing ball with industry rookies to increase greater awareness and sales opportunities.

Season-long, out-of-market live game packages from Major League Baseball (MLB.tv) and the National Hockey League (NHL Center Ice) have become part of the upstart ESPN+ direct-to-consumer service lineup, and the National Basketball Association’s NBA League Pass is taking its shots from inside Turner Sports’ Bleacher Report Live (B/R Live) DTC offering this fall. Against this backdrop, industry observers said the now wide-open field of standalone sports league and conference OTT offerings could be winnowed down to a handful of big, conglomerated DTC entities in the near future.

“These very elaborate, multi-sport [DTC] services aspire to be a Netflix of sports, and it certainly seems like they’re making substantial progress in doing so,” sports television consultant Lee Berke said.

Related: Sports Streaming Picks Up the Pace

The current roster of standalone subscription OTT sports services features a number of live out-of-market game packages ranging from the major pro sports leagues to college conferences such as the Atlantic 10 to smaller pro sports leagues such as the National Lacrosse League. Most of the packages operated independently from other digital services until this year, when B/R Live and ESPN+ launched with agreements to add many of the OTT services under their respective banners.

Berke said the emergence of DTC services like ESPN+, Bleacher/Report Live, CBS Sports’s CBS Sports HQ — with huge digital footprints and significant resources — have provided another platform for standalone sports networks to distribute and sell their content while maintaining their core OTT product for the diehards.

“Everybody is looking for as much shelf space as possible, so they will increasingly look to offer standalones or create partnerships with other entities and run the services side by side,” Berke said. “As long as the programming is being sold and watched, they’ll try all these different things out.”

Bleacher Seats

Turner, which launched its Bleacher Report Live in April, will offer several OTT sports services within its app, including NBA League Pass — which Turner Sports distributes in association with the league — and the National Lacrosse League’s out-of-market service for the 2018-19 season, which last year was offered at a suggested retail price of $49.99.

Related: Turner to Launch Streaming Service Bleacher Report Live 

While Bleacher Report Live is offering all of its live events — which include Spring League football games, the World Arm-wrestling League and UEFA Champions League soccer games — for free as part of the service’s introductory offer, eventually consumers will be able to purchase sports content through B/R Live by subscription or on an individual-game basis, according to Turner Sports president Lenny Daniels.

B/R Live will support its league partners with marketing and promotional opportunities across the full spectrum of the services, he added.

“We’re not paying for the rights and saying go away — we’re partners through and through, and we’re going to help them sell their services,” Daniels said. “You just can’t pay someone a rights fee and say we’ll see you in a couple of years — it just doesn’t work like that anymore.”

Along with offering the NHL and MLB out-of-market packages, the ESPN+ service last week secured digital rights to the Atlantic 10 Conference, which gives the $4.99 per month service rights to more than 500 college sports events per year. Those events were previously available through the conference’s website, with consumers paying an average of $9.95 to $14.95 per month to access them.

Related: ESPN Makes Direct-to-Consumer Pitch With ESPN+

The Atlantic 10 deal adds to an already strong price-value proposition for ESPN+, which will offer thousands of live sports events for less than $5 per month.

“There’s just an incredible amount of sports content, and the fan affinity for all the different sports out there just make it a very rich environment for the fan,” said ESPN executive vice president and chief technology officer Aaron LeBerge.

Berke, who consulted on the ESPN+-Atlantic 10 deal, believes more standalone OTT sports services will look to partner with other DTC services for the opportunity to increase sales and marketing opportunities.

“You’re going to want to partner up with [DTC] services that are highly distributed and that have substantial resources behind them,” Berke said. “You’re seeing properties partner up with very well-financed and well-distributed OTT platforms to gain eyeballs and distribution.”

That outreach also extends to the traditional pay-per-view business. ESPN+ will offer for purchase UFC’s monthly pay-per-view fight cards beginning in 2019 as part of its recent five-year, $1.5 billion TV deal with the mixed martial arts outfit reached last month.

While UFC will not offer its globally distributed Fight Pass OTT service within ESPN+, UFC chief operating officer Lawrence Epstein said the MMA outfit’s PPV events will benefit greatly from the additional editorial coverage from ESPN’s linear and digital outlets. The PPV preliminary fights will air on the flagship ESPN channel as part of the deal.

“We see this as a massive enhancer to the growth of our PPV business,” Epstein said. “Everyone was focused on the numbers associated with the ESPN+ and ESPN broadcast deal, but the enhancement to PPV, which is still a big part of our business, is going to be incredible.”

It’s unclear whether ESPN will charge the same suggested retail price for the UFC PPV events as the linear cable distributors. Epstein added that the licensing fee deals with traditional PPV distributors such as In Demand and DirecTV are up at the end of this year, but would not provide details on negotiation points.

“The splits are clearly better for content owners in the digital landscape than they are for traditional cable and satellite distributors, at least for right now,” Epstein said.

Sports executives said they can envision creating new packages exclusively for the DTC services.

The NBA in particular would potentially look to expand NBA League Pass — which already includes full-season, per-game and per-team subscription offerings — to include live game micro-transaction buys in which consumers would be able to purchase live games in progress, potentially beginning at the start of the fourth quarter.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver said during Turner’s March B/R Live press conference that the micro transactions through B/R Live, targeted toward fans with limited free time who want to catch an exciting end to a game or a spectacular performance from a player, will further enhance the league’s already popular league out-of-market package without cutting into traditional package purchases.

“The advantage we have online as opposed to traditional cable systems is that we can test and respond in real time,” Silver said. “We can set price points and experiment with different ones.”

The potential marketing and promotional opportunities aren’t lost on other standalone OTT sports content providers. FITE TV, which offers more than 60 live boxing, wrestling and mixed martial arts matches per month, would be interested in partnering with an ESPN+ or B/R Live for distribution of its PPV events, chief operating officer Michael Weber said, although no negotiations are ongoing. While the company has a strong technological backbone delivering its PPV events as well as a comprehensive website and FITE TV app, Weber said the company’s events would gain more exposure if packaged with a larger DTC sports service.

“Building a relationship with someone who could build off of our technology platforms would be very welcome,” he said. “We also bring a lot to the table that could help them as well.”

While the partnerships benefit both parties, Daniels doesn’t believe the leagues will abandon their standalone OTT offerings anytime soon.

“A lot of people are wondering if consolidation is going to happen,” he said. “Maybe long-term, but I think leagues like the NBA will continue to do their own thing, and I think they need to because there are fans that will want to go all in on a particular league. I think they can co-exist.”

Turner will launch the live sports streaming service Bleacher Report Live (B/R Live) on April 7.

Turner described the service as “the central hub for both the discovery and consumption of live sports content,” allowing fans to “find and watch their favorite sports content anywhere, anytime and on the screen of their choice.”

Starting this summer, B/R Live will implement flexible pricing options, with direct access to live games for purchase on an a la carte or subscription basis.

The platform helps users find and watch live sports with the ability to scroll through a feed of real-time sports events, and offers personalization features that aggregate live sports content.

Sports on the platform include soccer’s UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League, NBA League Pass games, 65 NCAA Championships and the PGA Championship, as well as the National Lacrosse League, The Spring League, Red Bull Global Rallycross and World Arm Wrestling League.

“As viewing habits continue to evolve, Turner is well positioned to provide fans with direct access to premium live sports content that is highly coveted by audiences of scale, including a high concentration of millennials,” said David Levy, president of Turner. “When we first acquired Bleacher Report in 2012, we knew the definition of a network was changing and we anticipated a time when B/R would become a virtual network. Today is a significant step in that direction and we will fully leverage the reach of B/R and its deep connection with passionate sports fans to provide compelling experiences for them across this new, exciting platform.”

NBA League Pass will allow fans to purchase and watch live NBA games in progress at a reduced price.

“For us, it’s really a question of bringing fans what they want,” said Adam Silver, NBA commissioner, offering the example of a fan tuning in as a star player goes for a historic point total.

Lenny Daniels, president of Turner Sports, called B/R Live "a game-changing product that will serve as the ultimate destination for the sports fan."