Following the deal, regulators, industry members, and competitors sounded the alarm concerning Netflix’s monopoly potential. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, for exampled, called the deal “an anti-monopoly nightmare”, noting it creates “one massive media giant with control of close to half of the streaming market. It could force you into higher prices, fewer choices over what and how you watch, and may put American workers at risk.”
Hollywood mainstays like Jane Fonda and James Cameron echoed these sentiments, while the industry’s largest unions, including the Writers Guild of America, Directors Guild, screen actors union SAG-AFTRA, and Hollywood Teamsters, expressed serious concerns, citing likely job cuts, heightened consumer costs, and wage reductions. By gaining control of HBO Max, Netflix will hold a controlling lead in a streaming war that has already drastically consolidated viewers, wealth, and decision-making power to select companies.
Prior to the merger, roughly 60% of streaming subscriptions belonged to three companies: Netflix, Amazon, and Disney. Netflix, by far the largest with 300 million subscribers across 190 countries, holds an approximate 80 and 104 million subscriber lead over Amazon Prime and Disney, respectively. Adding HBO Max’s 128 million subscribers will give Netflix an anticompetitive advantage. Sporting a collective content budget of $21.7 billion, roughly $3 billion more than Disney, NBCUniversal, and Paramount combined in 2024, the conglomerate will wield substantially more bargaining power than its competitors.
Industry leaders have stressed that the scale of the merger trounces previous major M&As, namely Disney’s acquisition of Fox in 2019. According to Marc-Olivier Sebbag, of France’s National Exhibitors Association, the “landscape today is very different from what it was when Disney and Fox merged; Netflix has a big chunk of the streaming market and Warner Bros. Discovery is already a consolidated giant.”
