The last time entertainment conglomerates were this eager to pair off, it was the late 2010s, and the industry produced couplings that ranged from the logical (Disney acquiring 21st Century Fox) to the eventually regretted (AT&T acquiring Time Warner, or was it WarnerMedia by then?). The mid-2020s are beginning to feel similarly matrimonial.
Consider the dance cards being filled out this year alone: Paramount Skydance is edging toward Warner Bros. Discovery, though that courtship has now attracted the attention of attorneys general in California and eleven other states, who have filed suit to block the deal on antitrust grounds. Fox has agreed to acquire Roku. Comcast has decided to spin off NBCUniversal, an announcement that executives have accompanied with the obligatory insistence that the newly independent company is "absolutely not" for sale — a protestation that tends to have the same half-life as a campaign promise.
All of which raises the perennial question on Madison Avenue and in the executive suites of Burbank and Culver City: Who's next?
Digiday has compiled a speculative roster of potential deals, and it is a document that would have seemed improbable even five years ago. Netflix acquiring NBCUniversal. Walmart acquiring The Trade Desk. Beast Industries — the company built by the YouTube creator known as MrBeast — acquiring Mattel. (That last pairing would give new meaning to "toy story.")
The logic behind each potential combination varies. Netflix, which has failed once already in its pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery, would gain through NBCUniversal the live sports rights it has been seeking. Walmart, having acquired Vizio and the connected-television advertising platform Vibe.co, would add The Trade Desk's demand-side platform to more closely mirror the advertising infrastructure of Amazon and Google. Beast Industries, which has built a company valued at $5 billion largely on the basis of one man's ability to command the attention of half a billion people, would gain Mattel's vast library of intellectual property — and, not incidentally, its manufacturing operations in China.
The valuations, as is often the case in such matters, have been cooperating with the acquirers. The Trade Desk's stock has fallen more than 80 percent since February of last year. Mattel's market capitalization has shrunk by roughly a third this year, bringing it below Beast Industries' valuation. Even NBCUniversal's streaming service, Peacock, commands just 1.7 percent of television viewing time, which, as one analyst noted, "doesn't look great on a pitch deck."
Whether any of these deals will come to pass is, of course, another matter. California's lawsuit against the Paramount-WBD combination is a reminder that regulators have their own views on industry consolidation. And the history of media mergers is littered with combinations that looked inevitable on paper and disastrous in practice.
(AT&T's shareholders would like a word.)
In the meantime, Disney is reportedly considering adding a free, ad-supported tier to Disney+ to compete with YouTube and Tubi, and Netflix is exploring live channels and subscription bundles to address declining subscriber engagement. The streaming wars, it seems, have entered their trench-warfare phase.
As for the industry's next great merger, the summer is traditionally a time for speculation, and fall will bring its own realities. The bankers, at least, remain optimistic.
Original story published in Digiday: "Future of TV Briefing: The M&A match game (summer 2026 edition)"