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Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters took another dig at big media M&A today as Warner Bros. Discovery formally put itself in play, calling studio mergers no sort of solution to the industry’s challenges. “You have to do that by the hard work of developing those capabilities in the trenches day to day. You don’t get there simply by buying another company that is also still developing those same capabilities,” he said on the giant streamers quarterly earnings webcast. “Think about Disney Fox, and Amazon picking up MGM, Time Warner and AT&T and then Discovery and Warner. But you know, none of those mergers were a fundamental shift in the competitive landscape. And we have seen also a wide range of outcomes from such mergers. So watching some of our competitors potentially get bigger via M&A does not change in and of itself, at least our view, the competitive landscape, and we don’t think it changes the substance of the challenge that our competitors face — specifically the range of activities that we and our competitors have to get great at has never been assembled in a single company before. “Think about producing film and TV shows across multiple genres and multiple languages in dozens of countries around the world. Trying to figure out how to incorporate the latest technology, including AI and Gen AI. We’re trying to figure out how we build better product experiences that can serve consumers better around the world. How about customer acquisition and retention? How do we optimize global payments? How do we optimize global partnerships? There is so much,” he said. He was doubling down on comments from a conference two weeks again when he rightfully disparaged the track record of big media mergers and said it’s unlikely Netflix would be interested in jumping in. Warner Bros. Discovery announced earlier today that it’s received interest from multiple parties around a deal for all or part of the company — the specific part being Warner Bros. studio and streaming assets. The newly merged Paramount Skydance led by David Ellison, backed by deep-pocketed Oracle chairman Larry Ellison, wants it very much but WB rejected initial overtures as too low. “It’s our responsibility to look at every significant opportunity we do that got a clear framework to evaluate those opportunities, and we’ll do whatever we think is best to do.” Co-CEO Ted Sarandos sounded slightly less heated. “We’ve been very clear in the past that we have no interest in owning legacy media networks, so there is no change there.” He did not mention studios. “When it comes to M&A opportunities, we look at them, and we look at all of them,” asking, ““Is it a big opportunity? First question. Second, if it’s IP, does it strengthen our entertainment offering? Is there additional value in ownership? Does it strengthen our existing capabilities somehow? Does the does it accelerate our existing strategy? And you look at all these things relative to the price, relative to the opportunity cost, and relative to other alternatives.” MORE
