TKO Group Holdings CEO Ari Emanuel has come out strongly in support of a merger between Paramount-Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery, a blockbuster entertainment deal which is currently being held up in the U.S. courts over antitrust concerns.
Emanuel penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday evening, arguing against a lawsuit filed by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, along with 11 other state attorneys general. The complaint, which argues that the $110 billion deal violates antitrust law, has caused the transaction to be placed on hold.
TKO’s Emanuel fights back on antitrust claims in his new opinion piece, claiming that there are many big players in Hollywood keeping the market competitive.
Amazon MGM crushed it with “Project Hail Mary,” earning nearly $700 million worldwide. A24 had one of the summer’s breakout hits with “Backrooms.” Lionsgate’s “Michael” crossed $1 billion. Amazon alone has committed to releasing at least 15 major theatrical films annually by 2027 and has the balance sheet to back it up.
He also argued that the overwhelming share of cable properties a merged Paramount and Warner transaction would provide isn’t a fair way to assess how the company would have control over the entertainment industry. Emanuel said that this ignores how TV and film are nowadays competing for attention along with “streamers, Youtube, videogames and everything else on a screen.”
“You think I’m letting my client’s horror movie premiere on the same day as a MrBeast video?” he wrote. “Or the release of the latest “Call of Duty”? Or when Netflix drops “Wednesday”? Think again.”
While Emanuel wrote that, as a Democrat, he has concerns about what it would mean for an Ellison-family-owned company to take ownership of CNN. But, he said a political issue like that isn’t grounds for trying to stop the entire deal with an antitrust argument.
When government officials manipulate markets to reach political outcomes, antitrust stops protecting competition and starts threatening it. The attorneys general should drop this case and get back to enforcing the laws as they are written. Let Hollywood creatives get back to trying to rip each other’s heads off at the box office, in streaming, online and everywhere else we compete. It’s what we’re best at.
Warner Bros. Discovery has the exclusive TV rights to AEW’s programming, airing Dynamite and Collision on its TV channels. They also have a minority stake in the wrestling promotion, a CNN report revealed months back.
TKO is currently under a seven-year, $7.7 billion deal to present UFC events on Paramount.
