Trump warns Netflix-Warner deal may pose antitrust ‘problem’

[WASHINGTON] US President Donald Trump raised potential antitrust concerns for Netflix’s planned acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery, noting that the market share of the combined entity may pose problems.

“Well, that’s got to go through a process, and we will see what happens,” Trump said on Sunday (Dec 7) when asked about the deal as he arrived at the Kennedy Center for an event, confirming that he met Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos recently and complimenting the streaming company. “But it is a big market share. It could be a problem.”

Netflix has “a very big market share, and when they have Warner Brothers, you know, that share goes up a lot”, the president said, adding that he will be personally involved in the decision-making process.

The US$72 billion deal would combine the world’s No 1 streaming player with the No 4 service HBO Max, which has raised red flags from antitrust regulators. The Justice Department’s antitrust division, which would review the transaction in the US, could argue that the deal is illegal because the combined market share would put Netflix well over a 30 per cent threshold.

Netflix is expected to argue that other services such as Google’s YouTube and ByteDance’s TikTok should be included in any analysis of the market, which would dramatically shrink the platform’s perceived market dominance.

Netflix’s Sarandos met with Trump at the White House recently to lobby for the acquisition, Bloomberg reported earlier. Trump confirmed that meeting. Netflix was not any kind of all-powerful monopoly, the executive argued at that time, and had suffered its own subscriber losses a couple of years earlier, according to sources familiar with the matter. BLOOMBERG