(Bloomberg) -- US President Donald Trump raised potential antitrust concerns around Netflix Inc.’s planned $72 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc., noting that the market share of the combined entity may pose problems.
Most Read from Bloomberg
Trump’s comments, made as he arrived at the Kennedy Center for an event, may spur concerns regulators will oppose the coupling of the world’s dominant streaming service with a Hollywood icon. The company faces a lengthy Justice Department review of a deal that would reshape the entertainment industry.
“Well, that’s got to go through a process, and we’ll see what happens,” Trump said Sunday when asked about the deal, confirming he met Netflix co-Chief Executive Officer Ted Sarandos recently. “But it is a big market share. It could be a problem.”
Bets on prediction marketplace Polymarket showed a 23% chance of Netflix closing the acquisition by the end of 2026, down from around 60% just before Trump’s comments. Warner Bros. rose 1% in early trading on the Blue Ocean trading platform, while Netflix dropped 1.4%.
The $72 billion deal would combine the world’s No. 1 streaming player with HBO Max, which has raised red flags from competition regulators. The Justice Department’s antitrust division, which would review the transaction in the US, could argue that the deal is illegal because the combined market share would put Netflix well over a 30% threshold.
Netflix has “a very big market share, and when they have Warner Brothers, you know, that share goes up a lot,” the president said, adding that he will be personally involved in the decision-making process.
Netflix is expected to argue that other services such as Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube and ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok should be included in any analysis of the market, which would dramatically shrink the platform’s perceived market dominance.
Netflix’s Sarandos met with Trump at the White House recently to lobby for the acquisition, Bloomberg reported earlier. Trump confirmed that meeting. Netflix wasn’t any kind of all-powerful monopoly, the executive argued at that time, and had suffered its own subscriber losses a couple of years earlier, according to people familiar with the matter.
By choosing Netflix, Warner Bros. jilted Paramount Skydance Corp., a move that risks touching off a political battle in Washington. Paramount is backed by the world’s second-richest man, Larry Ellison, and has touted longstanding ties to Trump. The acquisition of Paramount, which closed in August, has won public praise from the president.
No comments:
Post a Comment