Tomorrow marks new Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro’s first day on the job. We believe there are three bold moves that D’Amaro must make to reinvigorate Disney’s lackluster stock price performance over the past decade: 1) Exit Linear TV: Disney’s flywheel is built around its studio, with a vast array of IP, streaming, theme parks, and…
Paramount’s entire strategy, including the in-process acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, is wholly dependent on maintaining NFL rights for as long as possible. With Paramount’s leverage set to increase to 7x at the closing of the WBD transaction and over 70% of its combined EBITDA coming from linear TV, they must utilize NFL rights to…
GTC may have been NVIDIA’s event, but Uber once again got one of the better headlines. NVIDIA is investing heavily to move beyond being the arms dealer of autonomy and become a real full-stack contender, and Uber has been more than happy to borrow that ambition since CES. This week, the story finally came with…
Two companies dominate connected TV (CTV) streaming: YouTube and Netflix, representing nearly half of streaming time spent on TVs (based on Nielsen Gauge January 2026 data). While Disney has made a major push since launching Disney+ in 2019, dramatically ramping up content (before pulling back upon CEO Bob Iger’s return), acquiring 100% of Hulu through…
The Live Nation settlement with the DOJ is now official (link). Press reports from this morning (link) got most of the story, with some distinct differences. For example, LYV is not selling any amps and is only allowing primary ticketers access to tickets in non-exclusive deals. Our belief is that the biggest winner of the deal…
The NFL completed its last round of media rights deals in March 2021 with agreements that spanned 11 seasons from 2023-2033, with an option to exit each agreement after the 2029 season (2030 for ESPN/ABC). While we are only in the fourth year of those 11-year media rights deals, it is critically important for each…
Paramount management, led by CEO David Ellison, laid out their investor pitch for the acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery this morning (link). Key to making the transaction math work is the expectation of at least $6 billion in synergies by the end of 2029 (see slide embedded bottom left), to reduce leverage from 6.5x at…
We sat down over the weekend to brainstorm our key questions and topics for StubHub’s second earnings call. Then we compared the topics to what we wrote for STUB’s first call (link). It turns out the key questions remain the same. Part of the reason is that nobody asked the right questions on the company’s…
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr did not hold back in a wide-ranging, must-watch conversation with Semafor’s Ben Smith yesterday. The interview came shortly after Carr issued an FCC Public Notice (link and Carr’s tweet embedded to the right) seeking comments on how consumers are being affected by the shift of live sports content from broadcast to…
Southern District of New York Judge Arun Subramanian ruled today on Live Nation’s motion for summary judgment in the DOJ case against the company. He granted LYV’s motion in part, most notably dismissing the claim that Live Nation’s promotion and booking business constitutes a monopoly. He also dismissed the allegation that Ticketmaster is a consumer-facing…
You must be logged in to post a comment.