{"id":168874,"date":"2025-11-08T01:00:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T01:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/168874\/"},"modified":"2025-11-08T01:00:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T01:00:09","slug":"apple-not-buying-warner-bros-or-launching-ad-tier-for-apple-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/168874\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple Not Buying Warner Bros or Launching Ad Tier for Apple TV"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAmid all the chatter surrounding the future of Warner Bros. Discovery, one company has been noted over and over again as a possible buyer, even as management has remained silent: Apple<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe tech giant\u2019s Apple TV service remains a smaller player in a sea of streaming giants and wannabe giants, and speculation has been rampant that the Warner Bros. film and TV studios, as well as HBO, could help it turbocharge its ambitions in entertainment.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the same time, Apple TV is the only major streaming service that does not have an advertising-supported tier. While Apple does sell ads on live sports like MLS and (soon) Formula 1, it has steerd clear of the strategy embraced by everyone else of selling a lower-priced tier with ads.<\/p>\n

\n\tEddy Cue, the Apple executive tasked with overseeing the company;\u2019s burgeoning services business, appeared to shoot down both possibilities in an interview this week with Screen International<\/a> alongside Apple TV chiefs Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen pressed with Apple TV has plans in the pipeline for an ad tier, Cue responded \u201cnothing at this time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAgain, I don\u2019t want to say no forever, but there are no plans,\u201d he continued. \u201cIf we can stay aggressive with our pricing, it\u2019s better for consumers not to get interrupted with ads.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd shortly thereafter, when asked whether Apple would make a bid for WBD, A24 or Disney, Cue was similarly dismissive.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSame answer as before, but you\u2019ve got to look at Apple from a historical point of view,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t do a lot of major acquisitions. We do very small acquisitions in general, not related to Apple TV, so I don\u2019t see that happening because we like what we\u2019re doing. We\u2019re building and we\u2019ll continue building from that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tApple\u2019s biggest acquisition ever was the $3 billion deal for Beats in 2014, a deal that would is tiny compared to WBD, which is reportedly seeking north of $60 billion.<\/p>\n

\n\tApple has been making moves recently to bolster Apple TV<\/a>, including a bundle with NBCUniversal\u2019s Peacock, that $750 million F1 deal, and moves to try and make the service more accessible to consumers. But there may be a limit to its efforts, as Cue suggests.<\/p>\n

\n\tApple has the cash of course, but it also has the tech company ethos of building rather than buying. It\u2019s a philosophy shared by Netflix, though even the streaming giant has reportedly hired a bank to take a peek at WBD\u2019s books. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe come from a deep heritage of being builders rather than buyers. I also think that one should have a reasonable amount of skepticism around big media mergers, they don\u2019t have an amazing track record over the history of time,\u201d Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters said last month, before hedging by adding \u201cI would say it\u2019s our responsibility to evaluate all our options.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMicrosoft, of course, has never been shy about big splashy M&A, with Activision Blizzard and LinkedIn among its more recent deca-billion dollar deals. Amazon, likewise, has been willing to buy to give it scale in a space, from MGM to Whole Foods.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Apple? Despite being among the biggest companies in the world, with a market cap of nearly $4 trillion and more than $55 billion of cash on hand, it has never been one to do the sort of deals that its competitors have done, and Cue\u2019s comments suggest that it has no plans on changing that. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amid all the chatter surrounding the future of Warner Bros. Discovery, one company has been noted over and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168875,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74],"tags":[311,18,19,17,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-168874","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-apple","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-technology"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115511376230665809","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}