Ted Turner was a big proponent of live sporting events. During his time at the helm, TBS showed Braves baseball, Hawks basketball, Flames hockey and Georgia Championship Wrestling. Later they added college football and NASCAR, Goodwill Games, NFL, Olympics,FIFA World Cup, but almost all of that ended when Time Warner came into power and showed Turner the door.

Now, they show only postseason baseball games, they sold the wrestling company for chump change even though it delivered the highest ratings the networks had, dropped the college football, and declined to renew their package of NASCAR races. The only sports on now are a handful of baseball games, March Madness, NBA basketball, and some early rounds of a few golf tournaments.

Ted Turner understood that sports programming brought in viewers that may not always tune into that network, and once they were watching, the network could promote its programming to get the viewer to become a regular watcher. IIRC, there was a study done that said the average viewer only watches about 5-7 networks, thus the reason why sports programming keeps going up in value.