6 ms·
Netflix Backs Out of Warner Bros. Bidding, Paramount Set to Win
- softwaredoug 8mo agoMaybe running up the price was part of the point.
- galleywest200 8mo agoParamount has a lot of problems right now, financially. Maybe Netflix plans to buy them both in the next few years after those issues come home to roost for Paramount.
- softwaredoug 8mo agoBased on past owners of Warner Brothers, seems fairly likely in a few years. The value will be 1/10 of what it is today.
- nutjob2 8mo agoAnd when there is a different US administration.
- afavour 8mo agoI wasn’t bowled over by the idea of Netflix ownership but a merge of Paramount and Warner seems way, way worse. In a sane political situation this would raise huge antitrust concerns but… well, here we are I guess. If it does go through I wonder if there’s a scenario where it still works out for Netflix: they could pick up assets at bargain prices when the merged studios inevitably sell and lay off everything they can.
- softwaredoug 8mo agoState AGs play a role in anti trust enforcement. So it’s not over yet.
- lapetitejort 8mo agoWhen has a state AG successfully cancelled a merger? Did any state try to prevent Microsoft and Activision's merger?
- Bender 8mo agoKroger/Albertsons Merger (2024-2025), JetBlue/Spirit Merger (2024), Visa/Plaid Merger (2021), "Capture-and-Kill" Ski Resort Acquisition (2021-2022), Hospital Mergers (Various 2024) are a few.
- softwaredoug 8mo agoIIRC these also involved the Feds. When Feds are not involved, its harder for State AGs to win. Not impossible. And they can slow things down / get concessions.
- howardYouGood 8mo ago[dead]
- ls612 8mo agoThe thing is it is less of an antitrust concern for two also-rans in an industry to merge than it is for the industry leader to buy a struggling competitor. People don’t like the politics of Paramount’s ownership but from a competition perspective this is the better outcome.
- afavour 8mo agoWe’re talking about multiple industries here. In streaming Netflix is dominant. In terms of movie production studio Netflix is the also-ran compared to Warner and Paramount. A purchase by Netflix would give them something they currently do not have. A purchase by Paramount is a much more direct merge of two competitors.
- lotsofpulp 8mo agoIf the industry is defined as one that makes entertainment, then no one is dominant. Oracle and bytedance (tiktok), Meta (instagram), Alphabet (youtube), Reddit, Video Games, and even the sports leagues are huge competitors for screen time. Even restricting the industry to professionally made videos, there is Apple, Amazon, Comcast, Disney, Netflix, Sony, and Paramount. Ignoring the small ones like A24 and Lionsgate. Having or not having Warner Bros be a separate entity seems inconsequential, considering the weight of the others.
- dangus 8mo agoMaybe this is too much of a side topic or tangent, but I think that mergers shouldn’t be legal by default once a company is a certain size, regardless of the level of competition. I understand that there is a lot of competition and that a merger at this stage probably won’t harm competition significantly. But that shaky justification can be used until suddenly there isn’t sufficient competition. This reminds me of a recent Wendover Productions video talking about antitrust waivers for airline alliances flying transatlantic flights. In recent waiver applications, the ability to compete with other airline alliance conglomerates that have received antitrust exceptions is the justifying reason for requesting an antitrust exception, and that keeps happening until the industry becomes wildly consolidated. I think our antitrust system should say, while you have a lot of competitors, and under that criteria you would be allowed to merge, but your company revenue/market cap/employee count/majority owner wealth is too high to be eligible to merge. You’re sufficiently large and prosperous, there is no need to grow your company larger through M&A. If you don’t like the business environment you are in, change your operations. You have the money to pursue your goals.
- thiht 8mo agoI guess this would qualify as a protrust operation
- master_crab 8mo agoWell, Netflix did succeed at making the Ellisons pay a large fortune for something that costs a small fortune.
- dylan604 8mo agowaits 20 minutes, cool, interest just covered whatever that extra was
- throwaway5752 8mo agoNow they can control millennial and younger minds by controlling what CNN broadcasts.
- afavour 8mo ago…young people don’t watch CNN.
- btian 8mo agoNobody watches CNN
- llm_nerd 8mo agoI feel like you're posting some humorous sarcasm and are being misunderstood.
- andsoitis 8mo agotick, tock
- mystraline 8mo agoIsnt that the golden round robot that needs wound up every so often? (Crossing the chasm of Sar)
- llm_nerd 8mo agothey're listening
- israrkhan 8mo agoParamount agreed to pay the $2.8 billion breakup fee that WBD would owe Netflix if that deal didn’t go through.
- softwaredoug 8mo agoThe behavior of each party in this whole process gives you a lot more confidence in Netflix leadership than Paramount / Skydance. Paramount was about to go to idiotic lengths to get this. Netflix is willing to walk away.
- dylan604 8mo agoSure, I'd be willing to walk away with a briefcase holding $2.8 Billion with a B. How much stock would that buy back? Doubtful shareholders see any dividends from it.
- master_crab 8mo agoShare price of Netflix jumped 10% after the news broke. Pretty sure shareholders will see a lot of upside.
- lovich 8mo agoYea Paramounts behavior doesn’t seem rational if the direct economics of the companies involved were the only concern. But given that Paramount wanted to buy the CNN portion of the business that Netflix wasn’t even bidding on, it kinda seems like they have a longer term goal in place.
- nullocator 8mo agoI think Netflix is incredibly foolish for letting Paramount scoop this up, and their leadership is taking a huge gamble that the very broad media empire the extreme right has and is building in combination with unilateral control of the government will not be used to seriously undermine companies like Netflix in the coming years. Netflix isn't going to be simply competing against Paramount/WBD, they are going to be competing against the State's custom built propaganda machine.
- darth_avocado 8mo agoNetflix is going to buy them both for the same price in about 5 years. Paramount is a highly leveraged company. They are not going to come out of this very expensive acquisition unscathed.
- mudil 8mo agoI would not bet against RedBird and Ellisons.
- andsoitis 8mo agoOne must.
- HDThoreaun 8mo agoThe Ellisons have zero liquidity issues. Theyll sell off parts to cut costs but no chance they sell the stuff they actually want
- cyanydeez 8mo agoAs long as they get to keep a media alt-right afloat in politics, it doesn't matter their value.
- jsnell 8mo agoI'm hope not, and that they'll instead spin out WB, for it to be gobbled up again. Anything done three times is tradition, and breaking it just wouldn't do.
- programmertote 8mo agoIs it rumor or true that Saudis or some middle eastern financiers are part of the Paramount bid?
- gruez 8mo agoMaybe you're thinking of tiktok?
- 8mo ago
- hnburnsy 8mo agoLike many things, phone OS, desktop OS, CPUs, GPUs, ride sharing, credit card payments, video game consoles, we are heading towards a Disney/Paramount duopoly
- andsoitis 8mo ago> we are heading towards a Disney/Paramount duopoly Duopoly over what? Worldwide video entertainment?
- ibero 8mo agoparamount will disintegrate in due time.
- nullocator 8mo agoSure, right after twitter. Any moment now, lets just keep waiting.
- helaoban 8mo agoEasiest $2.8 billion made in history?
- mocheeze 8mo agoAT&T had to pay $4B for failure to acquire T-Mobile. T-Mobile used that money quite wisely.
- zedlasso 8mo agoRIP Superman
- aaronbrethorst 8mo ago"Truth, Justice, and the American Way" aren't dead yet.
- nutjob2 8mo agoAre you sure?
- mystraline 8mo agoThey've always been dead for a segment of the population. And its the section of population "We" (royal) chose. Unfortunately, We have exhausted the existing people we demolished. Now, who is being sacrificed is moving further up the economic foodchain with no real end in sight.
- mullingitover 8mo agoThis means Netflix still has all that cash they were planning to spend on WB, plus the 2.5B breakup fee from WB. They could arguably just build a better WB from scratch with that kind of money.
- internet101010 8mo agoOr just buy Paramount in a couple of years.
- crazygringo 8mo ago$2.8B! Which isn't huge next to Netflix's market value of $357B... but when you compare it with its $45B 2025 yearly revenue, it's at least a noticeable bump. You could make almost 4 five-season-long Stranger Things with it.
- downrightmike 8mo ago$2.8B is $2.8B
- gloryjulio 8mo agoIt's more than the quarterly net income last year. So still quite a lot.
- spiderfarmer 8mo ago> You could make almost 4 five-season-long Stranger Things with it. 4 good long running series is all HBO needed to become successful, so they got a free HBO.
- add-sub-mul-div 8mo agoThey've spent many multiples of that on their throwaway binge content but that doesn't get them to something as culturally valuable as WB.
- nutjob2 8mo agoIt's WB's back catalog that is the main prize.
- indigodaddy 8mo agoSo NF is just not matching or exceeding an elevated Paramount offer... But could WBD still choose the already on the table NF deal at the end of the day? I guess with the sort of statement that Netflix made though, it's likely WBD would not and realizes NF is just done at this point. Or maybe it's some sort of double bluff by NF? Hard to really know for sure.
- andsoitis 8mo agoIt would not be in WBD shareholders interest to walk away from Paramount's overpayment. It is a great deal for WBD shareholders, but a poor financial outcome for Paramount. Netflix's discipline is noteworthy.
- anduril22 8mo agoUnfortunately Paramount will retain HBO, and auction off Discovery, which no one wants anyway.
- NoGravitas 8mo agoParamount wants CNN, which is currently under Discovery.
- _dark_matter_ 8mo agoI literally do not understand this perspective. If that was true they would have let Netflix buy Warner Bros., which would have spun off CNN, and Skydance could have scooped it up for much much less money than buying the entirety of Warner Bros/discovery.
- DudeOpotomus 8mo agoLike buying Yahoo circa 2015... Like buying Aol, circa 2000 The audience has already left and it's never, ever coming back.
- andsoitis 8mo agoParamount's financing package combines roughly $45–46 billion in equity with more than $57 billion in debt. The deal values Warner Bros. Discovery at around $111 billion ($31 per share), and including WBD's existing debt, the total takeover comes to more than $110 billion. NBC News It would be the largest leveraged buyout (LBO) in history, with $87 billion of total pro forma gross debt and an estimated gross leverage of approximately 7x 2026 EBITDA before synergies. Seems like a poor decision driven by ego.
- xenadu02 8mo agoMy question is: who is lending the money for these leveraged buyout deals? They seem to leave the lenders holding the bag at some point when it all implodes. Do these deals really pay off often enough to be worth financing them?
- andsoitis 8mo ago> who is lending the money for these leveraged buyout deals? They seem to leave the lenders holding the bag at some point when it all implodes. Do these deals really pay off often enough to be worth financing them? For this deal, it is: - ~$57b Debt financing: Bank of America, Citigroup, Apollo - ~$46b Equity backing: Ellison's dad, RedBird Capital Partners - Sovereign wealth funds on the equity side: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi
- xenadu02 8mo agoThey keep financing these deals so they must be making money on them but there is so much value destruction in so many of these cases. Someone has to be left holding the bag of hot garbage in the end so who is taking the loss? We know private equity offloads the debt onto the walking corpse and usually pays themselves huge fees and bonuses for their "assistance". So it is clear how they make money. I just don't get how the banks make out.
- VonGuard 8mo agoInteresting perspective, here, from someone who has observed a tiny bit of unknown streaming history. So, way back in the day, 2005, Turner Broadcast corp. launched this weird-ass thing, known as GameTap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameTap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameTap . It was a subscription-based service that offered on-demand retro videogames. While it started as a way to play MAME Pac-Man and Metal Slug legally from a legit service, it grew into a competitor in the online games market arena in a time when Steam was still nascent. The whole thing was created by this amazing fellow named Blake Lewin. Blake was really sharp, and having built this on-demand, streaming emulation service, he even went on to add at-the-time-modern games. Now, this stuff literally just installed the game on your HD and let you play, so it wasn't quite Stadia or Luma, but it was absolutely ahead of its time, and it was really slick. I was a journalist then, and while games journalists get pampered, Turner moving into games was on another level. They launched this thing at the Armani Store on Market St. in SF, and when you walked in, they asked you to pick some sun-glasses from the case to take with you when you left. GameTap was great and even gathered a following, but from the moment it launched, I knew what it really was: Turner's scientific experiment to build the infrastructure to later allow it to stream its enormous library of content. Movies, cartooons, TV shows, etc. I was having lunch with Blake, a few years into GameTap, and I asked him point blank how the video streaming prototypes were coming (pure guess, no evidence). He was baffled and wanted to know how I knew they were working on that. Said it had been going great! But in the end, the service never launched, AFAIK. Maybe some remnant is still there somewhere, but it just shows, you can be years ahead in your planning and development, and still end up alone at the end dance. It's a shame. Turner has so many great things in their library, why is it not possible for me to just pay someone for access to all the old movies in the TCM vault!?
- underlipton 8mo agoI vaguely remember watching a video that held that a huge factor in the dot-com crash was a revelation that the build-out of broadband (last-mile fiber-optic in particular) was going to be way slower than initially thought, which left a ton of nascent services dead in the water. It feels like that was something companies were still feeling the sting of through the early 2010s. So many services and platforms that launched and, whoops, there still aren't enough Americans with fast-enough internet to support them. And then echoes of it in sectors like VR. The thing is, it wasn't just that all of these companies were making stupid miscalculations. They seemed to have been earnestly following forecasts for adoption, only to have the other companies that controlled how much of the public was going to be able to access those resources in the following month, year, 3 years, etc., slow-walk their roll-outs for their own strategic benefit. It makes me feel a little better that I can almost never afford to be an early-adopter for these things anyway, but it's frustrating as a consumer to see how long it takes for them to finally hit the market in a robust way (and eventually become cheap enough for mass consumption).
- underlipton 8mo agoWell, hope you enjoyed Pax Americana. We're heading into something that feels... about halfway between reich-y and soviet-y, at least on the propaganda front. Which is deeply ironic, of course.
- ta9000 8mo agoCNN has lower viewership than some YouYube channels. I think it will be fine.
- ubiquitysc 8mo agoCNN isn’t the only factor here. If you’re looking to shape the public consciousness all media is on the table.
- ta9000 8mo agoSounds like we need to get the public to stop watching this garbage then.
- russianGuy83829 8mo agoCNN; Midterms
- andsoitis 8mo ago> CNN; Midterms The deal won't be closed by then. You can expect it to take 12 - 18 months.
- pentagrama 8mo agoAfter the Paramount & Warner merger it will be good if they launch a Criterion Collection type of thing with the outstanding back catalog, going in the other direction of streaming, and producing and selling good quality Blu ray hardware. In my dreams of course.
- elondaits 8mo agoMy guess is that they are looking forward to juicy licensing deals with OpenAI, Google or Meta for the rights to generate AI content featuring Batman, Harry Potter, and other characters in the WB stable.
- lateforwork 8mo agoThis means CNN will now be controlled by Ellison. CNN will become another Fox news.
- cocacola1 8mo agoI know this comes up a lot, but if that were the case, they would’ve just waited for the split and bought the networks division.
- lateforwork 8mo agoI didn't say all they are interested in is turning CNN into another Fox news. It is just one of the outcomes.
- SilverElfin 8mo agoFrom https://nypost.com/2026/02/26/media/paramount-skydance-victory-in-warner-bros-discovery-bidding-war-came-after-failed-netflix-exec-visit-to-win-over-white-house/ https://nypost.com/2026/02/26/media/paramount-skydance-victo... > Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos failed Thursday to convince a skeptical Trump administration to approve his proposed takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery – and with that, his nearly done deal to buy WBD’s streaming service and studio went into a death spiral. Is this about the price of the deal or the administration not approving mergers that they think don’t align with right wing ideology?
- feb012025 8mo agoBased on how the takeover of CBS has been going, it really does seem like waning support for Israel is the major motivation behind this huge consolidation. Pretty unbelievable to watch In a matter of months: Paramount, CBS, TikTok, CNN, FreePress...
- bananamogul 8mo agoIt really does not.
- spiderfarmer 8mo agoThis is 100% the reason. They have the money, they have the motive, they have donated enough to end up with the political support to win any antitrust case filed against them. And they have the networks with bots and sycophants that will argue endlessly on their behalf. Religion is a scarily powerful motivator.
- throwaway290 8mo agoSaudis are sponsoring this
- pickleglitch 8mo agoIt's not Israel (though that may be a factor) it's Trump. It's textbook media capture. We're speedrunning the Victor Orban playbook.
- burnt-resistor 8mo agoTotally incorrect. The Ellisons and Bari Weiss are known for being massive Zionists.
- jjcm 8mo agoI think this will work out nicely for Netflix. It overleverages their competition, putting them in a worse spot, and I suspect traditional media is going to be far less of an demand from a pure screen-time perspective in the next 10 years. Generative content is just starting to get good enough with Seedance 2 - the cost of creation is about to plumet.
- ipnon 8mo agoThey loaded up 2 competitors with debt and got billions in return as a breakup fee. Not a bad strategy.
- mystraline 8mo agoGenerative content is going to make things super weird with the following. Theres TONS of 1950-1990 SciFi content. Lots of 1 off books, or trilogies. Really cool stories. And generative video could get to the point where we can make those books into movies. The weird place here is who owns the rights, and all that. And it coukd easily fall into an area like The Last Ringbearer is in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer Epub free, because of weird rights issues with Tolkien estate. https://www.tenseg.net/press/lastringbearer https://www.tenseg.net/press/lastringbearer
- MarsIronPI 8mo agoThis is exactly what I'm hoping for. When these tools get to a certain level I'd love to see a TV adaptation of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.
- nullocator 8mo agoAre they truly over leveraged when the purchase is being backstopped by countries like Saudi Arabia that have unlimited funds? I feel like people said the same thing about the Twitter purchase being over leveraged and it looks like Musk is about to very successfully offload that entire debt bomb onto happy public investors via SpaceX. I think this could work out quite well for the Ellisons, Trumps and Saudis, this purchase really bulks up their media empire and increases their ability to control public opinion via all major forms of modern media (Streaming, Tiktok, 24 hour news networks).
- etchalon 8mo agoI can't imagine Paramount doesn't ruin this.
- ulfw 8mo agoSo the right wing takeover of all American media continues
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- pupppet 8mo agoI tell ya, if you lean left politically it sure feels like we’re taking a lot of fucking L’s.
- nullocator 8mo agoAh, yes, only if you don't recognize the game actually ended a while ago. This is the consequences phase, the left isn't impacting outcomes anymore.
- tastyface 8mo agoUhm, have you not seen recent electoral results...?
- ZeroGravitas 8mo agoNo mention of Trump issuing insane threats against a Netflix board member and Netflix itself, in the story or the comments, because that is just normal now I guess.
- expedition32 8mo agoStages of grief. I am personally at "depression". America is over. Let's all watch some K-pop demon hunters! (On a positive note conservatives are really terrible at art. They will always need the gays, communists, atheists and liberals to entertain them).
- NoGravitas 8mo agoThe Communists Have the Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvCGZEqk8Ak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvCGZEqk8Ak
- volleyball 8mo agoI wrote the following comment 4 months ago when Larry Ellison bought Tiktok (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45267643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45267643 ). Reposting it here, verbatim since it is part of the same story (imo) and everything in it has been confirmed in the last 4 months except for the last paragraph. I guess we will find out eventually : So Larry Ellison just took over Paramount group which is now looking to bid for Warner Brothers and CNN. And now Ellison is going to take over TikTok. Paramount(being run by Larry Ellison's son) is looking to install the pro-israel-propagandist who has variously masqueraded as a liberal, a conservative and anti-woke free-speech champion, Bari Weiss[1] as CBS's editor-in-chief or co-president[2]. It also bears mentioning that Ellison is a life-long zionist, friend of the IDF and close personal friend of Netanyahu to whom he even offered a post at Oracle.[3] This very much looks like a hostile take-over of the American mind by a tech billionaire who just overtook Elon Musk to become the world's richest man. People should be talking about whether they want to go through this all over again. [1] - https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-falsely-denies-her-years-of-attacks-on-the-academic-freedom-of-arab-scholars-who-criticize-israel/ https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-fals... [2] - https://archive.is/20250916040811/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/business/media/cbs-news-bari-weiss-free-press.html https://archive.is/20250916040811/https://www.nytimes.com/20... [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Larry_Ellison&oldid=1311558388#Political_involvement https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Larry_Ellison&old...
- speedylight 8mo agoCan this shit cake be undone by a federal judge? No way a merger like that doesn’t violate antitrust laws.
- drumhead 8mo agoNetflix win this by losing. Paramount has massively overpaid for Warner Brothers, and taken on a crippling amount of debt. It was existential for them, they had a failing studio and streaming service which they hope Warners IP and HBO can compensate for. Let's not forget that Warner Brothers has been a bit of an albatross and never made money for anyone, that's why it's passed through so many different hands. Time, AoL Discovery to name a few. Now Paramount are going to be sitting there with a mountain of debt, while Netflix and Disney are relatively debt free and very profitable and cash generative.
- ta9000 8mo ago“Win”
- daft_pink 8mo agoI’m so happy, because I collect movies and the idea of Netflix putting the entire WB catalog behind a subscription with no purchase option sounds awful to me.
- burnt-resistor 8mo agoSay "goodbye" to John Oliver, Erin Burnett, Abby Phillip, Anderson Cooper, and Fareed Zakaria to be replaced with Nick Fuentes and Tim Pool.
- pjjpo 8mo agoI was looking forward to good UX accessing HBO through Netflix. Too bad, but looking forward to good UX accessing HBO, and paramount (?) some day down the line through Netflix when this converges.
- irenetusuq 8mo ago[dead]