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Bids for the rights to own all or some of Warner Bros. Discovery were delivered at noon Thursday – with deal insiders predicting a winning offer that will fall far short of the $30 a share that CEO David Zaslav said he wanted for the media conglomerate, On The Money has learned.
As of Thursday, the bidding war for WBD, which contains some of the news and entertainment industry’s biggest properties, pits Paramount Skydance – the burgeoning media company run by independent movie producer David Ellison and backed by his father, billionaire Trump donor and Oracle founder Larry Ellison – against Brian Roberts’ media behemoth Comcast and streaming giant Netflix, which is run by Ted Sarandos, Greg Peters and founder Reed Hastings.
Other media and tech companies like Amazon have expressed interest, but it’s unclear if they’re as committed as the main contenders in duking it out in a process that’s expected to last until the end of the year, people close to the bidding war tell On The Money.
Warner Bros. Discovery, known as WBD and run by Zaslav since the 2022 merger of Warner Media and Discovery Inc., owns a top studio and the No. 3 streaming service, not to mention CNN and HBO. Zaslav is expected to hold two, maybe three rounds of bidding to push the price up above the $23.50 that Paramount Skydance has already offered for the entire company, according to people close to the matter.
They said Paramount Skydance is expected to enhance its bid to around $25 a share. But people inside the company, including both Ellisons, are being advised they don’t have to engage in a costly bidding war that takes the final price much above $27 a share, the sources added.
That’s because the other major potential bidders, Comcast and Netflix, face significant regulatory hurdles from the Trump administration and its Department of Justice’s antitrust division. Plus, in the case of Comcast, there are balance sheet hurdles in meeting Zaslav’s money demands, sources said.
Netflix and Comcast are also offering to buy just chunks of WBD – the studio and streaming portions in particular – moves that could create so-called tax leakage, or costly tax consequences for WBD if those bids emerge victorious.
On top of that, it’s harder to value their bid compared to Paramount’s, which places a price on WBD in its entirety.
Comcast’s Roberts, meanwhile, has been busy looking for partners to support his bid because of high levels of debt on his balance sheet. Netflix is looking to pay stock for WBD’s streaming business and studio.
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Paramount Skydance is “offering nearly all cash – 80% of its bid — no leakage and regulatory certainty,” said one person involved in the process. “They’re selling the WBD board that by going with them, they have a bird in hand and vast uncertainty with the others.”
A WBD rep had no comment. Reps for Comcast, Netflix and Paramount Skydance had no immediate comment.
Another complicating factor – maybe the biggest – is politics. Netflix and Comcast are run by progressive types in Silicon Valley and the mainstream media. Comcast owns the notoriously anti-MAGA MSNBC, which Trump loathes. In contrast, the Ellisons have been seeking to instill more balanced news coverage at its reliably lefty news and entertainment subsidiary, CBS.
“I can’t imagine Trump wants to approve any deal that makes Brian Roberts or Reed Hastings stronger,” said a person close to the deal.
As first reported by On The Money, Zaslav, a veteran media executive, is looking for a final price for WBD “with a three in it” – meaning at least $30 a share, a deal valued at $70 billion. Yet the Trump administration — which can sue to stop any merger — has already made it clear what firm it would prefer in the WBD bakeoff, and that would be Paramount Skydance, run by his “friends” Larry and David Ellison.
Given Trump’s love of all things Ellison, their antitrust review is likely to be quick and clean – six months tops before the deal gets the green light.
If Comcast does emerge as the top WBD bidder, Trump’s antitrust chief Gail Slater is expected to launch a probe focusing on the fact that Comcast would own two of the biggest studios. The process could last two years if Brian Roberts decides to litigate a negative finding by antitrust in federal court, where it’s unclear whether he would even win.
Ditto for Netflix, which has stayed out of the government’s regulatory spotlight in building the No. 1 streamer – by combining with WBD, it would face a similar review.
The WBD board will have to weigh the cost of waiting for the government and the courts’ long processes of evaluating bids from Comcast and Netflix — compared to a relatively quick approval expected for Paramount Skydance’s bid, said people close to the matter. In the end, Zaslav and the board could walk away from all the bids and continue with their plan to break up WBD in the spring, the sources said.
Before the bidding war began in September, Zaslav was moving forward with separating WBD into a studio and streaming company, and one that holds the cable properties. He could revisit the sale next year and begin selling WBD piecemeal.
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