Netflix has bowed out of the bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery.
The U.S. streaming giant announced Thursday that it recently declined to raise their offer to acquire Warner Bros, essentially ending a months-long battle with Paramount-Skydance to obtain the for-sale entertainment company.
Warner Bros. Discovery’s Board of Directors recently determined that the latest proposal from Paramount was “superior” to what Netflix had previously offered, and that Netflix had to up their bid to remain in the discussion. However, Netflix wasn’t interested in playing ball anymore.
“We’ve always been disciplined, and at the price required to match Paramount Skydance’s latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive, so we are declining to match the Paramount Skydance bid,” said Netflix CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters in a joint statement.
Netflix had announced back in December that it would purchase Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming and studio assets for a whopping $72 billion. However, in an attempt to derail those plans, David Ellison-funded Paramount-Skydance was quick to launch a hostile bid valued at $108 billion. Unlike Netflix, Paramount was looking to purchase all of Paramount-Skydance in one swoop.
It was announced just last week that WBD had started discussions with Paramount-Skydance to hear its “best and final offer.” Paramount-Skydance said they could pay $31 per share and promised they would cover a $7 billion fee if the merger couldn’t be finalized due to regulators potentially blocking it.
“We believe we would have been strong stewards of Warner Bros.’ iconic brands, and that our deal would have strengthened the entertainment industry and preserved and created more production jobs in the U.S,” Netflix said Thursday. “But this transaction was always a ‘nice to have’ at the right price, not a ‘must have’ at any price.”
An agreement for Paramount-Skydance to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery, if finalized, would bring two significantly large sports, entertainment and news conglomerates under the same roof.
It would also mean that two companies with ties to combat sports would come together. WBD currently has the exclusive TV rights to AEW’s programming and owns a minority stake in the company, per a recent CNN article. TKO, which owns WWE, just recently kicked off an unprecedented seven-year, $7.7 billion deal to present UFC events on Paramount.
