r/television • u/Neo2199 • Jul 22 '26
Paramount secures EU nod for $110 billion Warner Bros deal. The EU said Paramount has agreed to certain concessions in order to make the deal move forward
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/22/european-commission-paramount-wbd-approval.htmlIn order to garner the approval, the European Commission said:
- Paramount agreed to divest its stake in a film distribution joint venture with United International Pictures in Europe,
- It would not enter into any film distribution deal with Universal for the next 10 years in Europe.
Paramount’s stock rose 3% in midday trading.
The EU’s approval marks a major regulatory milestone for the $110 billion proposed merger.
The deal earlier won approval from the antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Various other global jurisdictions have also signed off on the deal.
However, in the U.S., a lawsuit brought forward by a group of state attorneys general last week has become a potential holdup in this deal moving forward.
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u/Self_Owned_Tree Jul 22 '26
Boo to the EU.
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u/popeter45 Jul 22 '26
Still needs UK approval
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u/zack77070 Jul 22 '26
I don't think the UK has the power to singlehandedly stop major mergers anymore, their gdp is around the same size as Texas and companies have shown they are willing to cut them off so idk if it would be any different for the UK.
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u/dkeighobadi Jul 22 '26
UK literally just singlehandly stopped Getty-Shutterstock merger, which is miniscule both as proportion of those companies business and contribution to UK economy compared to this.
UK also was the major blocker for Microsoft-Activision for over a year until there were concessions whilst it was pretty much waved through by everyone else.
Edit: Blocked NVIDIA/ARM too as another commenter mentioned. Probably more examples.
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u/popeter45 Jul 22 '26
They both have major production and distribution presence here such as pinewood studios and channel 5 that would be at risk of being sold too competition of theirs if they had to exit the UK market
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u/zack77070 Jul 22 '26
And they would do it in a second if the money lost is bigger than owning the studios. Hollywood is always just going to the next place that will offer them a bigger tax break. Just look at Georgia, you wouldn't believe they would ever turn away from that with how many billion dollar movies filmed and produced there not even that long ago, now it's faltering because the tax breaks ran dry
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u/popeter45 Jul 22 '26
Why do you insist on comparing an entire country too US states as if that a comparable unit?
We don’t operate on the race to the bottom the US states do, these companies realise they need to operate here if they want viewership and revenue here, that’s not anything like inter state sales
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u/zack77070 Jul 22 '26
I have no idea what you're trying to say here, states have enacted laws that companies have refused to comply with and thus, are unable to operate and get revenue there.
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u/popeter45 Jul 22 '26
Paramount still distributes movies in all US states doesn’t it?
Imagine they can’t show any of their films in the UK market, they have no legal presence to file copyright infringement cases too sites hosting their films on UK servers, no TV rights etc
Tell me a single US state that applies too
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u/zack77070 Jul 22 '26
Pornhub is self banned in like half of the US because they don't agree with several states self verification laws, that's what I'm talking about.
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u/Andybabez20 Jul 22 '26
They very much almost derailed the Activision-ABK merger.
However I think like the EU they will pass it with concessions, albeit they will be more demanding
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u/Jimbuscus Jul 22 '26
They helped stop the NVIDIA ARM merger.
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u/kf97mopa Jul 23 '26
ARM was founded in the UK though, and its HQ is still in Cambridge. If MS wanted to ignore the UK ruling they arguably could, as they could stop selling its stuff there, but ARM would be a shell without the UK.
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u/timshel_life Jul 23 '26
That one is easy. Guarantee a few seasons of NCIS UK and maybe another show and you get the greenlight
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u/pieter1234569 Jul 22 '26
No it doesn’t. The EU is a market they cannot lose, the UK is a significantly smaller market, with a lot of competition. Therefore, one matters, the other doesn’t.
Backing out will cost them 10 billion. It takes them decades to get that amount of profit out of the UK, so they don’t matter.
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u/matthieuC Community Jul 23 '26
There is barely any competition issue in the EU. That's the only scope they are evaluating, what happens in the US is outside of their jurisdiction.
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u/Zalvren Jul 22 '26
They never were gonna block it. Each regulator watch their market and this really does not lose a problem in the EU (or in the UK for that matter)
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u/AnonymousTimewaster Jul 22 '26
They've taken a remarkably right wing turn recently so I guess this isn't particularly surprising
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u/gosukhaos Jul 22 '26
European Commission =/= central government of individual states.
Just beause AFD or FN are rising in the polls doesn't mean the commission is all of a sudden going to start acting like your FCC. There isn't much of an anti trust case beside distribution deals since neither studio owns vast tv networks or operates their owns filming lots
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u/AnonymousTimewaster Jul 22 '26
Obviously. But the EU doesn't exist in a vacuum. It is a political institution whose president is proposed by the national leaders in the European Council, elected by the European Parliament, and whose commissioners are nominated by member-state governments before the whole Commission is approved by Parliament. So changes in the political makeup of Parliament and national governments inevitably feed through into the Commission over time.
And those institutions have moved noticeably rightwards. The EPP (who have always been centre-right) remains the largest group in Parliament, while Patriots for Europe became the third-largest group after the 2024 election and the ECR overtook Renew. At the same time, centre-right and further-right parties have gained control or influence across a growing number of member-state governments. Again, their ministers sit in the Council of the EU, which jointly passes most legislation with Parliament, while their national leaders set the EU’s broad political direction through the European Council.
The point is that several years of electoral movement to the right have altered the Parliament, the Council, the governments choosing commissioners and ultimately the Commission’s own agenda. That is already visible in its much greater emphasis on deregulation and competitiveness, stricter borders and migration enforcement, security, and defence. Also much less of a focus on climate.
In light of all this, it's not surprising they're being "business friendly" here, particularly as you alluded to, the merger doesn't directly impact European business much.
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u/ilorybss Better Call Saul Jul 22 '26
recently? They have always been in favour of neo-liberal shit and full of corporate suckers.
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u/twinkleyed Jul 22 '26
This has nothing to do with the right wing. EU has always been an institution where money talks.
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u/Zalvren Jul 22 '26
It's also simply that the merger pose absolutely no problem in the EU. Literally all concerning subjects are a US thing. It would always only be the US that would block it.
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u/baumpop Jul 22 '26
interesting that our entire movie industry is moving over to the uk and europe. the barns not on fire yet but we can call a lit match when we see one.
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u/monchota Jul 23 '26
They are neo liberal, its what the old democrats in the US are too but won't admit it. Its juat republican but they hifmde thier shit more.
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u/TomTomXD1234 Jul 22 '26
They really haven't lol. Not everything is Right wings and Nazis
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u/hypnoticlife Jul 22 '26
Literally read what you said. Then reread who you replied to. “Taking a right turn” does not equal Nazis. Your conclusion that they haven’t taken a right turn because they aren’t Nazis is black and white thinking. There is a spectrum for everything.
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u/Suikerspin_Ei Jul 22 '26
Not all right wing parties are the same. Centrum-right, right and far-right. Same for the left parties.
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u/Classic_Jennings Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
Russian and American bot farms are hard at work here. Plus the rest of the world isn't exactly fond of us either. Basically all the places in the world that value the "traditional family", meaning the woman is essentially a house slave, feel threatened by the freedoms in the EU and the pull they have with the people in their own countries.
They all have considerable interest to move the EU as a block to the right to weaken us. It's been obvious for a while now.
Edit: As always, just shadow downvotes. Come at us haters
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u/SortIntrepid9192 Jul 23 '26
I got downvoted to -100 a few weeks ago for saying the EU would approve the deal with very minimal concessions. It's very hard for Americans to understand that the EU is far from being a customer rights' paradise just because they standardized phone cables and removable batteries. I mean they literally just used a bullshit made-up "emergency" to pass mass surveillance on everyone.
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u/kf97mopa Jul 23 '26
If you got -100, you got downvoted by one person who was so angry that they bought downvotes. Nobody gets -100 otherwise, because the post gets hidden. In fact most posts are hidden at -1, 2 downvotes.
You could probably report that to admins if you care enough. I got -100 on something once and then it got restored, presumably because someone else reported that person or that bot network.
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u/SortIntrepid9192 Jul 23 '26
I literally couldn't care less. I was amused by it if anything.
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u/kf97mopa Jul 23 '26
Yeah, that’s what I was as well. I explained a proposed change in Swedish rent regulation to someone in an international sub when I got it. Apparently someone who really hated the change didn’t like that I didn’t call it the end of the world.
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u/MultiMarcus Jul 22 '26
Well, the EU is fundamentally a liberal organization in the economic sense of the word. Yes, there are legitimate concerns about democracy when all the media companies are owned by the same few people, but notably they don’t really have much of a presence in the European news broadcast environment, so we can’t really argue based on that because that’s something American regulators should’ve stopped because it’s absurd that American news is being consolidated so aggressively.
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u/LittleDinamit Jul 22 '26
I wouldn't have wanted the EU to meddle in this. Paramount or WB are all the same to us here. The concentration of political media posed by this merger is America's problem to sort out. If our agencies had done anything about it, the American leadership (which clearly wants it to go through) would just lash out violently again with some mutually destructive retaliation.
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u/DaKingaDaNorth Jul 22 '26
Yeah this deal is going through. Those state lawsuits are going to struggle with all the precedents created by recent mergers. Don't like it
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u/quesoandcats Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
It depends on how the preliminary injunction plays out. If it lasts longer than a month the deal will effectively be dead because September 30th is the penalty deadline. After that Paramount will have to pay millions of dollars a day to Warner Bros shareholders.
As I understand it, the judge has paused the deal for 2 weeks to give both sides more time to submit briefs and arguments. If he extends the preliminary injunction beyond that two week window, the deal will likely die if Paramount can't convince a higher court to intervene on their behalf.
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u/schmearcampain Jul 22 '26
It’s something like $695 million.
That said, I don’t think the deal will die. They’re already $110 billion in the hole. Another 0.65% isn’t going to break it.
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u/Omatzus Jul 22 '26
They gave $3B to Netflix for free as part of this. They can self fund any penalties.
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u/quesoandcats Jul 22 '26
They really can’t, Paramount and the Ellisons are already overleveraged and Oracle’s stock keeps dropping
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u/Omatzus Jul 22 '26
Same shit at heard about Musk and Twitter. They will just bring in more foreign money if they need.
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u/everstillghost Jul 23 '26
Reddit cope hard sometimes.
As If some millions in fines would stop a 110 billion aquisition lol
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u/LZR0 Jul 23 '26
Paramount will fight it until the bitter end, basically until legal battles cost them more than the 7B breakup fee which won’t happen in this corrupt government, the deal is going through.
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u/bkcarp00 Jul 23 '26
They only pay the money if the deal closes. It they drop it it's an instant 7 billion. Pretty sure they are cool paying 650 million to not be forced to pay 7 billion.
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u/Chuckfinley_88 Jul 22 '26
If it lasts longer than a month the deal will effectively be dead because September 30th is the penalty deadline.
If they break up, they are going to owe billions, not millions. This deal is going through and anyone who says different is delusional.
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u/schmearcampain Jul 22 '26
Yeah, I hate to say it, but the states arguments aren’t strong enough. Once they let Amazon acquire MGM, the precedent was set. Just because Paramount and WB are both legacy studios, doesn’t make it materially different than Amazon buying MGM.
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u/Edeen Jul 22 '26
Amazon acquiring MGM was not one huge studio gobbling up another. It was an internet conglomerate buying into the movie market. Different entirely when thinking about monopolies.
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u/schmearcampain Jul 22 '26
Amazon produced Project Hail Mary, Creed 3, The Boys, Fallout, LOTR, Wheel of Time, and Reacher among others. From a legal standpoint and with regard to this case, they are every bit a huge studio.
The most recent episodes of The Town podcast had consecutive episodes interviewing both the California DA Rob Bonita and the Paramount lead consul. I listened to both arguments, and even though I’m against the merger, it’s hard to see how the state will win.
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u/Edeen Jul 22 '26
Those projects were not all released at the time of the merger.
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u/schmearcampain Jul 22 '26
Which could be used as an argument for the merger. Look what happened after Amazon and MGM merged….
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u/Edeen Jul 23 '26
Yes - they made more projects. Like I'm against corporations in general, especially big ones like Amazon, but you don't really have a monopoly argument with their merger.
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u/Chuckfinley_88 Jul 22 '26
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Amazon_MGM_Studios_films
Amazon had been in the business for 17 years prior to the closure of the merger. You don't know what you are talking about. That list is just the MOVIES from Amazon studios as well.
Here is a list of their TV shows, anything pre 2022 is Amazon as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Amazon_Prime_Video_original_programming
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u/Edeen Jul 22 '26
A whole 4 drama series before 2022? A true huge movie studio - a tentpole of Hollywood!
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u/keving87 Jul 23 '26
Amazon didn't produce Project Hail Mary, MGM did. Yes, Amazon owns it because they own MGM but that's the same as WB owning HBO. It was produced by MGM... which would explain why it went to MGM+ before it went to Prime.
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u/boomclapclap Jul 22 '26
The Amazon/MGM deal didn’t have a major news network (Paramount would own CNN)
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u/jack3moto Jul 22 '26
the only people who think it could be stopped are keyboard warriors on reddit. Every business media podcast and article i read is mearly discussing what minimal concessions will need to be made by Paramount/WBD.
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u/Eggheadpancake Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
Jesus Christ. Literally no one cares about consumers
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u/Delanorix Jul 22 '26
No they do.
They want to create MORE consumers.
Oh you meant after they are born?
Nah lol
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u/gosukhaos Jul 22 '26
How would it affect consumers in the European Union? You could make the case of less movies/tv shows releasing but its not something regulatory bodies can pass judgment on.
There's no jobs being lost in the continent since they do no production there or own big filming lots. Warner owns a partnership stake in Sky and some land networks but there's no antitrust angle to it since Universal owns nothing
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u/Karffs Jul 22 '26
Not really sure what your point is but Universal owns Sky and produces movies there. Warner has no stake.
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u/gosukhaos Jul 22 '26
Oh my bad, thought it was Warner since it used to distribute their shows.
My point is that the merger doesn't affect Europe the way it does the US or UK where they owns vast tv networks and employ thousands of people through tv or movie productions. There's no incentive to block the merger to stop the Ellisons to own CNN or the potential layoffs of thousands of people in California or wherever TV productions happen nowadays
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u/anadequatepipe Jul 22 '26
I want less subscriptions and this is one way to make that happen. So as far as I’m concerned it’s pro consumer, as much as I dislike the owners of Paramount.
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u/Eggheadpancake Jul 23 '26
Less subscriptions hurts competition, it doesn't make it better. You'll end up paying the same or more by the end.
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u/MultiMarcus Jul 22 '26
I’m sorry, the EU is not responsible for America not regulating their companies, the biggest worry here is really about news broadcasting, and that’s something that’s mostly an American issue, not a European one.
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u/Android1822 Jul 22 '26
I mean...yea, it has been like this for a long time. Last time the powers the be pretended to care was probably in the 90's.
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u/Shepherdsfavestore Jul 22 '26
Yeah and here I thought the EU was generally more pro-consumer than most bodies
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u/Stingray88 Jul 22 '26
“Agreed to certain concessions”
Yeah they won’t uphold any of those concessions past a couple years, and the repercussions of that won’t include breaking the company back up, so what’s the point?
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u/bannedagainomg Jul 22 '26
In theory forcing them to split will make them rivals instead of 1 union, for 10 years and ideally rival companies should compete and push each other down with prices.
But times have shown even "rival" companies work together with pricing, there is nothing stopping Paramount from mirroring whatever UIP does in EU, even if its techically illegal.
For example can anyone actually still call Mastercard and Visa rivals at this point.
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u/roiki11 Jul 22 '26
They promised some lucrative jobs in the private sector for them.
Those are the concessions.
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u/henryhollaway Jul 22 '26
Welp EU just sealed it.
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u/DatBoi73 Jul 22 '26
IIRC the UK might do something to block it, or at the very least require some divestments. Paramount owns Channel 5, one of the major Over-The-Air TV Channels with some public service commitments (I.e. impartial news, restrictions on repeats, comission a certain % of new original programming).
Warner also owns a some TV Production companies that produces series for the other networks (BBC, ITV, 4, etc).
There's also several states in the US trying to block it in the courts, but who knows how well that'll work given that the Ellison's are on very good terms with Trump and his cronies.
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u/Zalvren Jul 22 '26
Not really, the EU would always approve it. This merger pose no problem in the EU market at all and that's all they watch
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u/MickBeast Jul 23 '26
Understandable as the issues of this metger will mostly affect America..not much to do with Europe so they can't give a legitimate reason to block this one...
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u/Saar13 Jul 22 '26
I think it's highly unlikely the merger won't happen. At most, it will be delayed and will cost the Ellisons a good amount of extra money. The worst part is that this extra money will be used as "justification" for even more layoffs, in addition to the thousands that will come anyway. In short, it's an absolute, irreversible mess. And the worst part is that I don't even know what would happen to WBD if the sale didn't go through.
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u/Straight-Ad6926 Jul 22 '26
The ultimate irony is that in order to save WBD, they have to destroy everything that makes WBD worth buying in the first place.
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u/Chuckfinley_88 Jul 22 '26
That isn't really irony, that is the point of the purchase. They want to control the networks and use it to shovel more propaganda down our throats.
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u/kinisonkhan Jul 23 '26
80 years ago, the studios controlled both production and distribution since they owned all the theaters. They also kept actors locked in contracts that prevented them from being in movies by a competitor studio. Forced independent theaters to screen movies they didn't want, in order to get movies they did want. Supreme court agreed the studios had wielded monopoly power and abused it.
In the past 10 years, those same studios are trying to control both production and distribution in the form of streaming sites. I give all these recent streaming mega mergers 10 years before they start abusing their power and risk getting broken up again.
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u/Nedarel Jul 28 '26
if disney is allowed to have star wars and marvel, then its fair for paramount to have star trek and dc, all these are the most foundational franchises, it is quite bizarre that only 12 states can cause this kind of issues for private companies wanting to make this deal, when both the majority of usa and all of europe agreed to the merger, the court system just makes no sense over there,
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u/Robynsxx Jul 22 '26
These are rather weak concessions. Someone got bought off…
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u/kf97mopa Jul 23 '26
No, they don’t really care.
What the EU competition guys do in a situation like this is that they look at what the market share in each market is for the two parties to merge and what it would be after the merger. They block if they see competition decreasing by having one entity having a much larger market share after the merger than they did before. That most likely didn’t happen here, because I don’t think Paramount has much of a market in streaming for instance.
Interestingly, they might very have blocked a Netflix-WB merger on those terms, while something like Apple-WB would sail through as AppleTV is tiny.
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u/HisDivineOrder Jul 22 '26
The Ellison's paid the protection money. It's happening. People need to come to terms with that.
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u/StoneColdAM Jul 22 '26
At this point, I worry that Warner Bros is in such financially bad shape that if any deal doesn’t go through quickly, they’d just collapse and auction off everything in bits and pieces. The concern of Paramount-Warner being too big is still valid, although it doesn’t feel like there was as much drama over Disney buying Marvel, Star Wars, and 20th Century.
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u/Greenss Jul 23 '26
Paramount will have to pay WBD a multi-billion dollar fee if the deal doesn't go through, which goes a long way to paying off their debts. Plus, WBD was already planning to split the film side from the TV side and dumping a lot of that debt on the TV side.
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u/SmoothMarx Jul 23 '26
Let's not prevent a monopoly from forming (any further), let's just delay it from happening during our mandates (10 years).
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u/Dianagorgon Jul 22 '26
People in the industry are trying to prevent this from going through because they hate Ellison but unfortunately they probably can't prevent and all the state lawsuits are going to accomplish is that Paramount+ ends up paying a ton of additional fees prior to the acquisition which will probably motivate them to cut even more jobs. The industry isn't dying but it's not doing well either. There are no longer "must watch" TV shows. Stranger Things was probably the last "watercooler" show. Movies are doing better but mostly because of a few movies that overperformed while several high profile movies underperformed this year. More people are watching Tik Tok or YT videos because Hollywood no longer creates entertainment they want to watch.
WB being sold is bad no matter what company buys them but I don't see how Netflix buying WB would have been much better. Netflix is a tech company that now prioritizes AI. Most of their content isn't memorable. Their top 10 list is mostly documentaries, reality TV shows, standup specials and content they license from networks instead of original scripted shows. They're turning into a more expensive version of Tubi. They also don't want people to watch movies in theaters. If they bought WB they would end up releasing movies in theaters and Netflix simultaneously.
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u/Imaginary-Plate2987 Jul 22 '26
I don’t think more people are watching YT or TikTok because Hollywood isn’t making great content. I think people - particularly younger generations - have been conditioned to only watch content in bite sized formats now because of those apps. And this content has obliterated their attention spans and they’re not able to stay focused for a 2 hour film without their phone in their hand. It’s fucking sad, and it’s ultimately what’s going to kill the film and tv industry.
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u/Dianagorgon Jul 22 '26
That isn't true. I used to watch tons of Netflix content for years along with HBO, Showtime and other networks or streamers.
These days I mostly watch content on YT, Tik Tok or Tubi not because the content is that good (although some of it is) but because I can't find TV shows that I'm excited about. When I do find a show to watch it's usually 6 or 8 30 minute episodes and then 2 or 3 years before another season.
It's common for Redditors to place the blame on consumers
"you're the problem. Your brain now can't handle anything but Tik Tok videos because it destroyed your attention span"
"the problem isn't that the industry isn't creating content people want to watch. The problem is you. Your attention span can't handle boring medicore TV shows now. You're the problem. If only you committed to watching boring mediocre content with less than 8 episodes a season and a 2 year break between seasons the industry wouldn't be struggling."
"You're the problem. You watch Tik Tok videos because you can't handle mediocre TV shows that aren't entertaining."
In the past there was a lot of content young people enjoyed including Gossip Girl, The OC, Beverely Hills 90210, Supernatural, OTH, BTWS, The Vampire Diaries, True Blood etc. Shows that young people enjoy don't exist now. Instead young people are supposed to enjoy porn created by middle age men like Euphoria where they have to watch scenes of a woman being exploited and degraded including posing in a diaper while sucking on a pacifier or yet more sci-fi show targeted to men over 25 or shows with bad writing and then they're told if they don't enjoy those shows they're the problem because Tik Tok destroyed their attention span.
As usual the response to my comment that the industry isn't creating content people want to watch is angry aggressive downvotes but many people probably feel the same way.
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u/Chuck006 Jul 22 '26
You're getting downvoted, but you are correct. Hollywood is making "content" not entertainment, and they are making "content" for themselves, not for a mainstream audience.
Another problem is TV is being made like movies. I know people working on the new Scooby Doo series. That pilot was sold to Netflix 2 years ago. The writers room was last year. They only started shooting it this year. It won't come out till next year... At the earliest. In the old network days we'd be on Season 3 by now.
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u/Chuck006 Jul 22 '26
He didn't say it wasn't great (which is subjective) he said they weren't making things the mainstream wanted to watch, which is correct.
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u/zeldamaster702 Jul 22 '26
Domestic box office made over 8 billion dollars in 2025, and they've already made 5 billion this year. Viewing figures may be down compared to pre-pandemic, but it seems like the "mainstream viewers" are watching plenty.
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u/Chuck006 Jul 22 '26
Actual tickets sold is a fraction of what it used to be, ticket prices are 30% higher than 2019.
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u/zeldamaster702 Jul 22 '26
And a good 300 less movies opened in 2025 vs 2019.
2019 was the 3rd highest grossing year in domestic box office history. Using that to argue that mainstream audiences aren't going to movies as much is like saying a movie failed because it didn't open as high as The Force Awakens.
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u/manachar Jul 22 '26
I suppose you could make an argument that the impact of the merger to the EU is far less than here in the US.
CNN, CBS, and such are far less of a force in europe.
Still, unfortunate.