A potential media mega-merger is under active discussion, but plenty of questions remain about bringing together the parent companies of CBS Sports and TNT Sports.
Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison has approached Warner Bros. Discovery about acquiring all of the company, according to industry sources and multiple reports. Bloomberg put a number on an original takeover offer, reporting that WBD rejected a bid of roughly $20 per share for being too low. That price is only a small premium on WBD’s current trading price of about $18 per share.
That’s hardly the end of the story, however, as Ellison still has multiple options going forward, including raising the bid, either alone or with additional financial backers, or appealing directly to WBD shareholders.
Appearing last week at a Bloomberg conference, Ellison declined to address directly any interest in WBD, but he spoke more broadly about the opportunity for greater scale and consolidation in the media business.
“There’s a lot of options out there in terms of what actually might be actionable in the near future,” Ellison said. “We would approach that through the lens of wanting to make more, not less.”
A Paramount-WBD deal, should it happen, would create an industry colossus with extensive reach across broadcast and cable television and streaming, and live game rights to nearly every major U.S. sports property, outside of the NBA. There is already some interplay between the two companies, as they have collaborated for years on March Madness coverage.
“Ironically, it was [WBD CEO] David Zaslav last year that said, ‘You know, consolidation in the media business is important.’ And the way we approach everything is, first and foremost, what’s good for the talent community, what’s good for our shareholders and value creation, and what’s good for basically storytelling at large,” Ellison said.
Beyond pricing and core terms, however, there are other financial obstacles. WBD’s market capitalization of about $44 billion is more than twice the comparable value for Paramount. Ellison, meanwhile, would need to agree to take on WBD’s current debt load of about $35 billion.
Broader Context
The Paramount interest arrives amid significant change unfolding for both companies. Under Ellison, Skydance Media this past summer completed an $8 billion merger with Paramount to create the current company, but only after agreeing to several conditions imposed by the Federal Communications Commission and the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Those conditions, including the installation of an ombudsman within CBS News, have sparked widespread criticism. Just before that deal closed, Paramount reached a $16 million legal settlement with Trump regarding complaints he made regarding a 60 Minutes interview with 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
WBD, meanwhile, is on track to separate into two publicly traded companies, with the bulk of the sports operations headed to a forthcoming Discovery Global. That plan, set for completion in mid-2026, is far enough along that TNT Sports is developing its own streaming service apart from HBO Max.
Any deal with Paramount, or anyone else, would need to create a path superior to the one contemplated in the WBD separation, and it’s likely that Zaslav and WBD still hold significant leverage.
