Donald Trump has warned there could be competition problems around Netflix\u2019s $83bn (\u00a362bn) deal to buy Warner Brothers\u2019 movie studio and streaming networks.<\/p>\n
The US president, speaking at an event in Washington DC on Sunday, confirmed he would be involved personally in the decision about whether the government would approve the takeover.<\/p>\n
He said Netflix had a \u201cbig market share\u201d and the companies\u2019 combined size \u201ccould be a problem\u201d.<\/p>\n
Netflix emerged as the winner of the Warner Bros Discovery auction<\/a> on Friday, beating rivals Paramount Skydance and Comcast.<\/p>\n The combination of Warner\u2019s HBO Max streaming service and Netflix would put the company over the 30% market share threshold in the US. It would hand Netflix control of the studio behind franchises including Harry Potter, Batman and Superman, as well as HBO<\/a>, home to shows including Game of Thrones, The White Lotus and Succession.<\/p>\n However, Netflix is expected to argue that other streaming services such as YouTube<\/a> should also be considered in the media landscape.<\/p>\n At an event at the John F Kennedy Centre in the US capital, Trump said Netflix had a \u201cvery big market share\u201d that would \u201cgo up by a lot\u201d if the deal goes ahead.<\/p>\n Many industry voices, including Hollywood unions<\/a>, have argued the deal should be blocked.<\/p>\n The merger is expected to be reviewed by the Department of Justice, but Trump said on Sunday he would be personally involved in the decision.<\/p>\n Trump added that Netflix\u2019s co-CEO Ted Sarandos visited the Oval Office recently and praised him for his work at the company.<\/p>\n \u201cI have a lot of respect for him. He\u2019s a great person,\u201d the president said. \u201cHe\u2019s done one of the greatest jobs in the history of movies.\u201d<\/p>\n Before the deal, reports suggested that Trump\u2019s preference was for Paramount to win the Warner Brothers takeover<\/a> because it is backed by Larry Ellison, the billionaire co-founder of the tech company Oracle and a Trump supporter. The chief executive of Paramount Skydance is David Ellison, his son.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Business Today<\/p>\n Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n William Kovacic, former chair of the Federal Trade Competition, the US competition regulator, said the president\u2019s involvement in such a deal would be \u201cunprecedented\u201d.<\/p>\n He told BBC\u2019s Radio 4 Today programme: \u201cThe negotiation of any possible solution is going to run through the White House and that means we\u2019re going to have probably a deep level, an unprecedented level of presidential control in the resolution of what used to be a technical analysis of a merger.\u201d<\/p>\n Blair Westlake, the former chair of Universal Studios Television and Networks, said it was natural that big media companies were consolidating.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of people don\u2019t realise that the No 1 place that consumers in the world go for viewing of content is YouTube,\u201d he told the Today programme. \u201cIt is far and away beyond anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n The Netflix-Warner merger is not expected to be finalised until the third quarter of 2026 or later, and will be subject to regulatory approval in the US and in Europe.<\/p>\n Netflix was approached for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump has warned there could be competition problems around Netflix\u2019s $83bn (\u00a362bn) deal to buy Warner Brothers\u2019…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-173492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}