President Trump called Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos a “fantastic man” and praised his company while fearing its potential merger with Warner Bros. Discovery “could be a problem” due to its tremendous market share.
Speaking with reporters on the red carpet of the Kennedy Center Honors event in Washington, D.C., Trump confirmed that he met with Ted Sarandos ahead of Netflix’s negotiations with Warner Bros. Discovery, adding that the deal “could be a problem” due to potential antitrust legal challenges.
“I’ll be involved in that decision,” the president said, adding that Netflix’s proposed $83 billion deal for Warner Bros. will “go through a process” to “see what happens.”
The president also had kind words for Ted Sarandos, calling the co-CEO of Netflix “fantastic man.”
“I have a lot of respect for him, but it’s a lot of market share,” Trump said. “He’s a great person… He’s got a lot of interesting things happening aside from what you’re talking about, but it is a big market share. There’s no question about it. It could be a problem.”
Sarandos told investors on a call with Wall Street analysts on Friday that he believes the deal with Warner Bros. Discovery will close in 12-18 months.
“[We are] really confident that we’re going to get all the necessary approvals that we need,” Sarandos told analysts. “This deal is pro-consumer, pro-innovation, pro-worker, it’s pro-creator, it’s pro-growth.”
According to Variety, Sarandos conveyed to President Trump during their meeting that “even combined with Warner Bros. and HBO Max, Netflix would grow to be about as big as Google’s YouTube in the U.S. — and would still have less TV market share than other media conglomerates, according to a Bloomberg report.”
Prior to Netflix announcing a deal with Warner Bros., Paramount called the sales process unfair and bias, claiming that the “sales process has been tainted by management conflicts, including certain members of management’s potential personal interests in post-transaction roles and compensation as a result of the economic incentives embedded in recent amendments to employment arrangements.”
Warner Bros. Discovery shot back that its board “attends to its fiduciary obligations with the utmost care, and that they have fully and robustly complied with them and will continue to do so.”
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