Surely, Netflix knew how this would all play out.
Yes, while Friday saw Netflix announce it would pay $72 billion for Warner Bros. Discovery’s film and streaming businesses, that news was obliterated on Monday when Paramount announced its hostile bid, going directly to shareholders with a deal that would give them $17.6 billion more in cash than the Netflix deal.
Since Paramount has already paid the customary Trump tax—an eight-figure bribe to his future presidential library—they appear better equipped to win regulatory approval for the deal.
And these days, it’s the regulatory approval, not the money, that may matter most.
Normally, political writers do not have to keep abreast of the blow-by-blow details of media mergers, but now that those mergers happen only if Trump wants them to, we get to think about this all the time.
The Netflix deal wasn’t just some tentative offer that had been floated by Warner Bros. Rather, the Netflix and Warner Bros. boards had both voted to accept the deal.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, shown in February.
However, Paramount has enough money to go right to the Warner Bros. shareholders and offer to shower them with more cash. It also has enough influence with Trump to try to tank the deal in a regulatory way.
Netflix almost certainly knew that, which is why co-CEO Ted Sarandos made a pilgrimage to the White House in November to discuss the deal with Trump. Sarandos left the meeting thinking that “Netflix wouldn’t face immediate opposition from the White House” over the deal, according to Bloomberg.
To be fair, the opposition wasn’t immediate, so Sarandos was partly right. But why on earth would anyone believe, nearly a year into Trump’s second term, that Trump is someone who would keep his word? Sarandos did show the proper deference by approaching the throne and begging, but Netflix was far behind Paramount in the sucking-up-to-Trump department.
It isn’t just that Paramount had previously shown its eagerness to do Trump’s bidding and turn CBS News into what is basically TrumpTV. Paramount is also far better-equipped to compete in this stupid, corrupt process because CEO David Ellison’s daddy, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, is a big Trump ally, getting huge multibillion-dollar deals like an amorphous AI infrastructure partnership and a stake in the deal that could see TikTok’s algorithm pivot to the right.
Paramount also made sure to tuck a treat for the extended Trump family into its Warner Bros. bid: Son-in-law Jared Kushner’s investment firm, Affinity Partners, is helping to finance Paramount’s bid.
Skydance Media CEO David Ellison, shown in May.
Altogether, David Ellison was likely not just blowing smoke when he was telling people in October that Paramount would be the only buyer the Trump administration would approve of.
Trump himself paved the way for Paramount’s bid, remarking on Sunday that if Netflix bought Warner Bros., the resulting huge market share “could be a problem.” Trump also said that he would be involved in the approval process, which suggests he will put his thumb on the scale. And Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, doubled down on the threat Monday, saying that the Department of Justice would be examining the proposed Netflix-Warner Bros. deal “for quite a while.”
To recap: If Netflix buys Warner Bros., that raises antitrust concerns, but if Paramount—which owns everything from Paramount Pictures and CBS News to Nickelodeon, MTV, and more—does so, it’ll probably be just fine.
This isn’t to make light of sincere antitrust concerns. Increased media consolidation is a genuine issue as billionaires gobble up more and more information and entertainment sources, increasing prices while decreasing choices.
But the Trump administration doesn’t care about market share so much as it cares about using the necessary, once-normal tools of oversight to force companies to their knees. Paramount long ago showed just how willing it is to do so voluntarily, so why shouldn’t it expect to be rewarded here?
