Trump raises concerns over Netflix’s $72b bid for Warner Bros

US President Donald Trump has raised concerns about Netflix’s proposed US$72 billion deal to buy Warner Bros Discovery’s movie studio and HBO streaming networks, saying the combined market share “could be a problem.”

The two companies announced an agreement that could bring franchises such as Harry Potter and Game of Thrones to Netflix, but the deal still requires approval from competition authorities.

If completed, the deal would be one of the largest in the film industry, potentially moving major entertainment properties, including Looney Tunes, The Matrix, and Lord of the Rings, to Netflix.

Trump said that Netflix’s market share would “go up by a lot” if the deal goes ahead, and that he would be involved in the approval process.

Both the East and West branches of the Writers Guild of America have called for the deal to be blocked, citing concerns about job losses, lower wages, higher prices, and less content diversity.

🔗 Source: BBC

🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

Netflix’s scale tempers market fears

Netflix leads the U.S. Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) market and has over 300 million paid subscribers worldwide 1 2. Max (Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming service, rebranded to HBO Max in July 2025) took 15% of Premium SVOD Gross Additions (share of new premium-tier streaming sign-ups in the period) in Q2 2025, and Netflix took 11% 3.
Hulu had 14%, Paramount+ had 14%, and Peacock had 13% of Premium SVOD Gross Additions 3.
About two-thirds of U.S. HBO Max customers pay for Netflix 4. That means overlap and little change in Netflix’s addressable market.
Premium SVOD churn averaged 4% in June 2025 3.

Cloud and media vendors face integration

Warner Bros.’ library holds about 6,650 feature films, 50,000 television titles, and 14,000 animated titles 5. Netflix will need to run ingestion (secure transfer and preparation of media files) into its infrastructure.
HBO Max holds 2,283 movies and 1,815 TV shows 6. 0.4% of films and 0.6% of TV overlap with Netflix 6. Most will need new encoding and quality control, plus localization and metadata tagging.
Vendors for cloud transcoding (re-encoding video into multiple formats and bitrates) should contact Netflix’s vendor management plus content operations teams during the 12 to 18 month closing, then again after 7. Providers of automated quality control (QC), subtitle or dubbing localization, plus Content Delivery Network (CDN) services should do the same 7. Netflix will need to reprocess Warner Bros. and HBO catalogs for its 190+ country footprint 2.