{"id":388072,"date":"2025-11-18T17:54:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T17:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/388072\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T17:54:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T17:54:13","slug":"warner-bros-discovery-bids-due-from-paramount-netflix-comcast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/388072\/","title":{"rendered":"Warner Bros. Discovery Bids Due From Paramount, Netflix, Comcast"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe For Sale sign is fully lit on Warner Bros. Discovery<\/a>, and three legitimate bidders are putting together offers: David Ellison\u2019s Paramount Skydance<\/a> (which wants the whole enchilada) and Netflix<\/a> and Comcast<\/a> (which are eyeing the WB streaming and studio operations).<\/p>\n

\n\tWarner Bros. Discovery has set a Nov. 20 deadline for first-round bids, which would be nonbinding, sources told Variety, confirming an earlier report by the Wall Street Journal. The board is expected to meet before Thanksgiving to evaluate the offers and aims to have the process wrapped up by year-end.<\/p>\n

\n\tOf course WBD, which has rejected an Ellison bid of $23.50 a share<\/a>, could stay on its original course and split in two \u2014 with David Zaslav heading Warner Bros. (HBO Max and studios) and current CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels leading the TV-centric Discovery Global. But the board, if it is really acting in the best interests of shareholders, will be forced to accept a bid that results in the maximum windfall.<\/p>\n

\n\tA stand-alone Warner Bros. would have an enterprise value of $44 billion (and $37 billion equity value), per estimates by Wall Street research firm MoffettNathanson. Zaslav\u2019s hypothesis is that Warner Bros. streaming and studios, separated from the flagging TV biz, would be worth more than it is as part of the current WBD. The question is how aggressive the Ellisons, Netflix and Comcast will be in trying to land what could be a once-in-a-blue-moon chance to seize the assets of one of Hollywood\u2019s legendary companies.<\/p>\n

\n\tHere\u2019s a look at each potential bidder\u2019s position.<\/p>\n

\t\tParamount Skydance\t<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of Ellison\u2019s key arguments is that he is the best dance partner for Warner Bros. Discovery<\/a> compared with the other two leading contenders. He and his father, Larry Ellison, are friendly with Trump. And there are regulatory pitfalls with Comcast and Netflix. (More on that later.) Ellison is a motivated bidder, and the logic is that combining Paramount Skydance with WBD would produce a scaled-up powerhouse that emerges as one of the biggest in media and entertainment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut at the same time, Ellison is signaling that he\u2019s not irrationally exuberant: He told investors last week on Paramount Skydance\u2019s first earnings call<\/a>, \u201cIt\u2019s important to know that there\u2019s no must-have for us. We really look at this as buy-versus-build, and we absolutely have the ability to build to get to where we want to go.\u201d What about antitrust issues with Paramount-WBD consolidating two major studios? The Ellison camp would suggest that such a union introduces a far stronger competitor to the likes of Disney and Netflix. The Ellison family (i.e., Larry) is fully backstopping the play for WBD, with participation from RedBird Capital, which helped fund the Paramount Global deal.<\/p>\n

\t\tNetflix\t<\/p>\n

\n\tIn public, co-CEOs Ted Sarandos<\/a> and Greg Peters<\/a> have stayed on message about the streaming heavyweight historically leaning on the \u201cbuild\u201d side of the build-versus-buy question. But the chance to snap up Warner Bros., with its deep film and TV library, extensive production capabilities and HBO Max, is an opportunity they would be remiss not to investigate. Netflix has the stock (with a $470 billion-plus market cap) and cash on hand ($9.3 billion) to make a credible bid; an offer would likely be all-stock. But the streamer isn\u2019t in spend-at-all-costs mode either. Note that Netflix passed on outbidding Ellison for UFC rights, which Paramount acquired in a $7.7 billion seven-year deal<\/a> with Ari Emanuel-led TKO Group.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s also an antitrust concern with Netflix getting its hands on HBO Max and the Warners studios biz \u2014 one that Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., raised in a Nov. 13 letter to Trump officials<\/a> before a bid was even in. \u201cWith more than 300 million global subscribers and a vast content library, Netflix currently wields unequaled market power,\u201d Issa wrote. And among other complications, Netflix would have to figure out how Warners fits into its anti-theatrical stance. If Sarandos chose to simply slot the WB slate into the Netflix streaming queue, that\u2019s bad news for exhibitors. In any case, there\u2019s irony that Netflix is in a position to acquire Warner Bros., coming 15 years after then-Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes derided the streamer as \u201cthe Albanian army.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tComcast\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThe cable and media giant is undergoing its own split, as the Versant cable TV vehicle readies to push off from NBCUniversal by year-end. Comcast co-CEOs Brian Roberts and Mike Cavanagh, like Ellison, see huge synergy opportunities by combining HBO Max with Peacock and merging Warner Bros. studios into Universal. Unlike Ellison, though, they don\u2019t want to buy WBD\u2019s cable networks (CNN, TNT, HGTV, Food Network and the rest). On the downside, Comcast shares are near a 14-year low, which presents a challenge in the face of Netflix\u2019s robust stock and the massively wealthy Larry Ellison. Roberts was said to be recently scouting for outside investors to back Comcast\u2019s Warner Bros. bid. Meanwhile, there\u2019s the Donald Trump factor: The president has heaped scorn on Roberts over the coverage he\u2019s seen on left-leaning MSNBC (now MS NOW), and some analysts say that personal enmity could doom Comcast\u2019s chances.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s another potential scenario: one in which Netflix gets the Warner Bros. studios, to be led by Zaslav, and Comcast buys HBO Max. But this would be a logistical and regulatory minefield, and it\u2019s not clear everyone would be on board. \u201cGreg and Ted really want this, but Reed [Hastings, Netflix\u2019s chairman] doesn\u2019t want to deal with the regulatory hassles,\u201d an industry insider says.<\/p>\n

\n\tAmid all this, what does David Zaslav want? \u201cZaslav wants the biggest crown that gives him the biggest portfolio,\u201d a well-connected exec says. In the current crucible of at least three competing bids, this person adds, he and the company\u2019s board \u201cmight just be trying to run up the price.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The For Sale sign is fully lit on Warner Bros. Discovery, and three legitimate bidders are putting together…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":388073,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[18422,171,4659,77684,173,67,132,68,27281],"class_list":{"0":"post-388072","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-comcast","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-netflix","11":"tag-paramount-skydance","12":"tag-tv","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us","16":"tag-warner-bros-discovery"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115571986612401185","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}