Warner Bros. Discovery Stock (NASDAQ:WBD) Tumbles as New Ad Chiefs & Sports Strategy Shake Investor Confidence

Wall Street isn't buying what Warner Bros. Discovery is selling—at least not today.

Fresh Faces, Same Problems

The media giant's stock took a hit following announcements about new advertising leadership and revised sports broadcasting plans. Neither move impressed the market, sending shares sliding as investors questioned whether these changes address the core challenges facing traditional media.

Sports Strategy Fumble

Revised sports content distribution plans failed to score points with analysts who've seen this play before. The company's attempt to reinvent its sports monetization strategy looks more like a replay of old failures than innovative play-calling.

Advertising Overhaul Backfires

New ad chiefs stepping into the spotlight found themselves facing immediate skepticism. The market's reaction suggests these appointments feel more like rearranging deck chairs than actual solutions to the advertising revenue declines plaguing legacy media.

Another day, another media company trying to solve digital-age problems with analog-thinking executives—because what's more traditional than expecting new faces to fix old broken models?

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The new presidents of United States advertising sales are Robert “Bobby” Voltaggio and Ryan Gould. Gould has been with Warner since 2012, when Turner Broadcasting picked up Bleacher Report. Recently, Gould became head of streaming, digital and advanced advertising sales, a role he has been in since 2023. Voltaggio, meanwhile, stepped in in 2005, but became head of revenue and operations in 2019, where he remained until this new promotion.

Both of them, meanwhile, will be tasked with sales operations for both networks and streaming for now. Though when the split comes, it looks like Voltaggio might end up in the streaming platform. While Gould will be handling advertising sales, go to market, Voltaggio will be handling advertising sales, platform monetization. How their roles will be handled post-split, however, is not yet known.

Odd Sports Pushes Continue

Meanwhile, Warner is still making a play for the unusual sports market, carrying on with coverage of the Grand Tour with the La Vuelta a Espana series. The event has 21 total stages, reports note, and originally started showing just days ago, meaning the full series will carry on into mid-September.

Warner is handling a lot of the broadcast duties on this one, reports note, with Eurosport 1 handling live broadcast throughout Europe and the Asia-Pacific market. TNT Sports 1 and TNT Sports 3 will get the Ireland and United Kingdom coverage, and Quest will offer up free highlights coverage. Moreover, once this series of cycling concludes, the whole thing will migrate down to Rwanda to cover the Road World Championships, demonstrating Warner’s clear commitment to unusual and, perhaps, underappreciated sports.

Is WBD Stock a Good Buy?

Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on WBD stock based on 10 Buys and seven Holds assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 48.46% rally in its share price over the past year, the average WBD price target of $13.86 per share implies 17.81% upside potential.

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