Paramount + signage in the Times Square district of New York, United States, Thursday, December 21, 2023.
Gabby Jones | Bloomberg | Getty images
David Ellison seems to buy an empire from the media.
The CEO and president of the New Skydance of Paramount Skydance operated an investment bank to help prepare an offer to take away in Warner Bros. Discovery, according to people familiar with the question that spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss non -public transactions.
Warner Bros. Discovery had not yet received an offer from Thursday, according to familiar people. However, the actions of the company has skyrocketed almost 30% Thursday afternoon, marking the best day of negotiation of the action on the file.
The representatives of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery refused to comment.
Bring Warner Bros. Discovery in the fold would add to the growing list of Ellison franchise acquisitions and sports media rights. WBD, who announced in June that he planned to separate into two entities, has a series of desirable assets. Add them to the collection of intellectual properties in Paramount and Ellison could have a content giant on his hands.
“An offer for WBD would consolidate the neglected value of its asset portfolio which was increased by its record,” said Robert Fishman, analyst at Moffettnathanson on Thursday.
A mountain of content
Already internally, Paramount has franchise films and television shows like Star Trek, Transformers, Spongebob Squarepants, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Paw Patrol, Scream and Mission Impossible.
More recently, he has widened his IP based on video games beyond Sonic The Hedgehog, which is a franchise of one billion dollars in its own right, to hang the rights to make a theatrical film Call of Duty and the distribution rights to the adaptation of Street Fighter in Legendary.
Warner Bros. Discovery has a massive library of major franchises, including DC superheroes, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones and Harry Potter. He also has cartoons inherited like Scooby-Doo, Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry. He is also the Dune Dune Dune de Legendary franchise and the films of Godzilla and King Kong.
Last year, Warner Bros. was the second highest studio in the world box office and Paramount was the fifth higher, according to Comscre data.
In addition to strengthening the theatrical slate of Paramount, the Warner Bros. streaming service. Discovery HBO Max has more than 125 million subscribers at the end of the second quarter. Paramount + currently has around 77 million streaming users.
Chasing Espn
In the wake of the Paramount-Skydance merger, Ellison also obtained an agreement of $ 7.7 billion over seven years to parameter the exclusive American house of the organization of mixed martial arts of the TKO group. The agreement means that the UFC will stop its à la carte payment model and the events will be available directly for paramount + subscribers and, in some cases, on CBS.
Sports rights are rare and only become available when previous transactions expire. Apple should already be the home of Formula 1, and Major League Baseball is waiting for its transactions to expire after the 2028 season to reorganize its media packages. This means that Paramount will have few other high-end sports assets to bid and acquire mid-term.
Meanwhile, Warner Bros. Discovery has the right to broadcast National Hockey League matches, the Major Baseball and March Madness basketball league with the French Open and the NASCAR.
A potential link between Paramount Skydance and WBD would exponentially extend the intellectual property library of Paramount and an arsenal of sporting content which could help him to compete with Disney ESPN.