Netflix appears to have put in a winning bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, the current World Cup broadcaster.
As reported on various outlets – we first saw the news on Deadline website – this move comes about as part of a general broadcasting battle between Netflix and Paramount.
Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) put itself out for offers a couple of months ago and quickly received a series of offers from Paramount. Then Netflix stepped up with a ‘$28 a share’ offer, mostly in Actual Money according to Deadline’s sources. WBD’s shares are currently sat at around $26, which is a year high (they had been their lowest at $7.50 earlier this year).
What this means for World Cup racing broadcasts is not entirely clear. For some strange reason, the news focus has been on WBD’s ownership of Harry Potter, DC Comics, Game of Thrones and (every parent’s favourite) KPop Demon Hunters Singalong.
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Netflix does not have a history of acquiring companies in moves such as this one, and there’s not much precedent in terms of live sports coverage from Netflix, so it feels very much like the current WBD broadcast team would simply find themselves being watched via the Netflix app instead of WBD’s.
In terms of what it means for mountain bike race fans, basically it’ll potentially be a massive reduction in cost. Netflix UK’s monthly subscriptions start from £5.99 (Standard with Ads) as opposed to the rather hefty £30.99 demanded by WBD/TNT for this year’s racing.
WBD has stated that it hopes any deal to complete before the end of the year.
[ Thanks to Hannah Dobson for the headline! ]
Yes please!
Sadly i don’t think that means free in Netflix
It just means that muppets like paying to watch world cups is profitableÂ
I’m interested to know what makes someone who is into mountain biking, wanting to watch mountain biking, a muppet?Â
A mountain biker calling a football fan a muppet, or a footballer calling an F1 fan a muppet, for paying to watch their particular choice of sport, I get. But, are you not into Mountain Bikes? Is that not why your here?Â
To me that sounds like an excuse to put their subs up again. I guess they have fallen behind on streaming live events – they’ve had a couple of wrestling things, but Amazon have got some Champs league, Disney have various things & Apple have MLS so they are probably looking to catch up.Â
If it was just part of regular Netflix, that’ll be amazing. I doubt that’ll happen. It’ll either be kept separate using all the WB infra. Or be part of a Netflix sports bolt on at £40 per month.
Indeed, my inner pessimism says Netflix subscription PLUS added cost
Duh, The Muppets are on Disney+
On the Netflix thing, I expect they’ll continue to run it as a separate service for now. I would expect some more realistic decision-making than WBD’s ludicrous pricing and some service rationalisation and merging to follow though.
Report on PB suggests the Netflix bid does NOT include sports.
Netflix in Exclusive Talks for WBD Acquisition, Sports Broadcasting Reportedly Not Included in Deal – Pinkbike
You have to think that a big chunk of WBD’s value is based on the current subs price so why would Netflix devalue that by integrating it into their current pricing? Unless it was just a landgrab opportunity and worth it to move into that segment.Â
Their boxing stuff has been huge. They’ve been showing the jake paul circus
The Crawford Canelo fight they covered was by far the best boxing coverage I’ve watched in a long time as well as a phenomenal fight
I don’t watch them, but I don’t really understand why you would pay to watch what is, in essence, advertising? Also, wouldn’t you rather ride your bike?
As the STW report hints, they’re already winning the streaming war – but they don’t have the same big heritage franchise properties as Disney (and to some extent Amazon).
Acquiring Harry Potter and DC comics would take them up a level in that regard.
More amalgamation of streaming services is likely in future too IMO. The current fragmentation is unsustainable.
I watched a short YouTube vid about this earlier this week – saying how big media defeated the pirates by offering what they could but with a better UI & more conveniantly. Now the fragmentation & number of options is starting to push the price back up to Sky levels & the people are turning back to piracy