The WarnerMedia-Discovery deal has sent streaming behemoths scrambling in a media-convulsing game of musical chairs.
“AT&T management was, frankly, desperate to dump its assets to return to its roots as a telecom company, and Discovery management took advantage of that,”principal analyst at Pivotal Research Group, told me. “In the end, it is about building enough critical mass in streaming to be successful. But the problem is, I doubt the global market can support more than four to five massive players.”
The deal won’t change much for HBOMax and Discovery+ subscribers in the short run. But it has caused a major convulsion in the already-turbulent streaming universe, as conglomerates eye further consolidation in hopes of growing big enough to survive.chairman of advisory firm CreaTV Media. “Hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake here, and this is just heating up.” Csathy sees Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+ as the current top three streaming services.
Might NBCUniversal and ViacomCBS band together in order to take on their newly expanded competitors? “The content assets for Comcast/NBCUniversal and of ViacomCBS would make a natural fit,” said the Vertere Group’s Hanlon, though he suggests that Comcast could also try to make a bid for WarnerMedia to upend the current deal with Discovery. “I think many eyes are on Comcast, NBCUniversal right now. It’s their strategic play on the chess board.
Cord-cutting was supposed to make TV cheaper and more fluid—but with such an avalanche of new streamers available, most viewers in practice can only afford to pay for a handful at a time. That means we chase andthrough streamers, opening and canceling subscriptions as we go. Companies like Netflix, Disney+, and HBOMax need to have a constant flood of shows and movies so alluring that you’ll never want to quit them.
That means streaming giants will likely continue to devour other, smaller streamers in the quest to stay on top, in part to acquire franchises that keep them competitive with Disney+ and a newly pumped-up WarnerMedia.. Csathy speculated that even Netflix could benefit from swallowing up a legacy company to gain access to some franchise action.
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