Paramount’s Hostile Bid for Warner Bros. and HBO Max Includes Future Olympic Television Rights

The ongoing Warner Bros saga that is ripping through the media world took a new twist on Monday morning, when Paramount made a hostile takeover bid for the company just days after it agreed to terms to be sold to Netflix.

Warner Brothers holds the European media rights for the Olympics through 2032, meaning the outcome of the deal could have significant impact for future Games viewers on the continent.

Warner Brothers recently announced that for the upcoming Olympics, every event at the Games will be broadcast live in all HBO Max plans in Europe. HBO Max is part of the deal.

• Read more about the hostile takeover from the AP here.

Warner Brothers’ offer directly to shareholders is worth about $74.4 billion, or $30 per share in an all-cash deal. That is more than the $72 billion takeover deal that Warner Bros. reached with Netflix, which include a part-cash, part-stock deal.

Paramount says that their deal is worth $18 billion more than the Netflix offer, pointing at the regulatory hurdles faced by the Netflix deal. Netflix, however, says that they believe that the eventual spinoff of Warner Bros’. cable assets, including news giant CNN, which are not included in the Netflix deal, makes it worth more to the shareholders. The Paramount deal would include the entirety of the Warner Bros. Discovery portfolio.

The deal offered by Paramount directly to shareholders was the same deal that Paramount offered directly to Warner Bros., which was perceived by the market to be the leading bid.

Paramount is owned by David Ellison, an acquisition earlier this year funded by his father Larry Ellison, the world’s second-richest man. Ellison is believed to have significant aspirations in the media space alongside other mega-billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos, with media companies becoming the new status asset, making the acquisition of CNN particularly attractive to him.

In making his pitch, Ellison flexed his relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump (who noted his strong relationship with Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos a day earlier) while discussing his belief that the Trump administration would kill the Netflix deal on anti-competitive grounds. “I also believe he believes in competition. And when you fundamentally look at the marketplace, allowing the No. 1 streaming service (Netflix) to combined with the No. 3 streaming service (HBO Max) is anticompetitive,” Ellison said.

HBO Max is the #4 streaming service globally by subscriber counts according to FlixPatrol.

Top Streaming Services Globally by Subscribers:

1. Netflix – 301 million
2. Amazon Prime – 200 million
3. Disney+ – 131 million
4. HBO Max – 128 million
5. Tencent Video – 114 million
6. iQIYI – 101 million
7. JioCinema – 100 million
8. Paramount+ – 79 million
9. Hulu – 64 million
10. Peacock – 41 million

Comcast also originally made a bid for the Warner Bros. Discovery conglomerate, which would have unified the U.S. and European hosting rights. There was no public bid by Warner Bros. for the Olympic broadcasting rights in the United States.