Paramount Skydance prepares Warner Bros Discovery takeover
House of the Dragon is a WBD-owned series
David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance is preparing to mount a bid for Warner Bros Discovery in a move that if successful would create a media monolith in the US and significantly change the streaming dynamic in the Australian market.
The Wall Street Journal broke the news of the potential bid, which was subsequently verified by other outlets. The market affirmed its belief in the report with WBD shares jumping by around 30%. Paramount shares also experienced a boost.
A 5-day view of WBD’s stock price with the recent spike (Google)
While Paramount Skydance’s market cap was around half the size of its WBD quarry before the news broke – and WBD is saddled with significant debt – the takeover is viable because Ellison’s bid is apparently backed by his billionaire father Larry Ellison.
Ellison senior is the founder of Oracle, and recently was briefly named world’s richest person after a surge in the value of his holdings.
Paramount Skydance itself is the newly created result of a merger between Paramount — which owns CBS and Paramount Pictures among other assets — and David Ellison’s Skydance. WBD has restructured recently into cleanly divided linear and streaming/studios divisions, a move that observers widely interpreted as a preparation to sell.
David Ellison’s current bid – for WBD as a whole – indicates he didn’t want to pay the premium that buying the divisions may have commanded separately.
In Australia a Paramount-WBD merger would see the Paramount+ and HBO Max streaming services coming together to form a formidable content proposition. WBD’s HBO Max service entered the Australian market in March this year, wrenching premium HBO content away from Foxtel’s Binge.
The merger would also see Paramount’s 10 (formerly known as Network 10) gain a potential big boost for its BVOD service (also called 10, formerly 10 Play).
