The battle for Warner Bros. appears to be over, and Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos is shedding more light on the company’s failed bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, following Paramount’s hostile takeover. Sarandos is making it clear he doesn’t think the outcome came down to the regulatory hurdles many assumed, and he’s straight calling out Paramount’s "narrative" on how things went down.
In a wide-ranging interview with Politico, Sarandos touched on everything from European regulations to YouTube as a competitor, but the collapsed Warner Bros. deal still loomed large. And when it came up, he pushed back on the idea that government scrutiny was ever the real problem. Instead, he suggested the bigger issue was perception. He explained:
I can’t name a transaction that was similar to this that has ever been blocked in history. We did not have duplicated assets. We did have a market concentration issue in the marketplace that we operate in, and I think that’s the feedback I was getting back from the DOJ and from regulators in general, which was, they understood that, but I do think that Paramount did a very nice job of creating a very loud narrative of a regulatory challenge that didn’t exist.
That’s a pretty direct claim, as Sandros seems to be arguing that the concerns around it were amplified in a way that didn’t match reality. He also made a point to separate the actual process from the public conversation around it. He continued:
I think it complicated the narrative, not the actual outcomes. I think for us it was always a business transaction, was always a well-regulated process in the U.S. The Department of Justice was handling it; everything was moving through. We were very confident we did not have a regulatory issue. Why would that be? It’s because it was very much a vertical transaction.
Vertical deals, which involve companies operating in different parts of the same ecosystem, don’t typically raise the same red flags as mergers between direct competitors. Sarandos is essentially saying Netflix’s bid fell into that safer category, even if it didn’t play that way publicly.
Interestingly, he also downplayed the idea that politics played any meaningful role. Despite headlines surrounding Donald Trump and even calls to remove a Netflix board member, the streaming executive described that moment as little more than social media noise, not something that actually shifted the outcome.
Zooming out, the Warner Bros. bid was never positioned as essential for Netflix anyway. Sarandos reiterated that it was a “nice-to-have” opportunity at the right price, not something the company needed to continue growing. He emphasized that the streamer is still expanding on its current path, with or without a major acquisition, focusing on giving viewers more bang for their Netflix subscription buck.
While Netflix’s potential takeover of Warner Bros. wasn’t exactly met with universal enthusiasm, the reaction to Paramount stepping in appears even more negative. Reports suggest the Paramount deal could lead to significantly deeper job cuts than what was expected under Netflix’s proposal. On top of that, there are ongoing antitrust concerns, especially after Paramount signaled plans to combine its two streaming services, which could be a good thing for folks already paying for both an HBO Max subscription and a Paramount+ subscription.
