During their 2Q 2021 Earnings Call on Tuesday morning, Discovery CEO David Zaslav said he anticipated a “lot of consolidation” in the streaming industry on the heels of the merger announcement between Discovery and WarnerMedia.
“The toughest thing to do is to put together a great library or a great menu of content of IP,” he said, pointing out the significance of developing content in the midst of market consolidation. “Since our deal, you look at the Amazon deal, you look at the announcement of the Reese Witherspoon deal.”
Zaslav said that Disney and Netflix are both in their sights as companies to watch. Despite this, he is not interested in looking at any significant changes in the near term.
“Disney and Netflix have gotten across the lake, and we think that this (Warner Bros. Discovery) will be the third global streaming service — successful, sustainable. That’s our mission,” he said. “A lot of the other IPs that are subscale will probably be raising their hands or people there will be a lot of consolidation, and some of that may be opportunties for us, but right now, I like where we are.”
He maintained the significance of the sheer volume of content being consolidated with the new Warner Bros. Discovery as a major selling point for the new company.
“When it comes together: Harry Potter, King King, Godzilla, Batman, Game of Thrones; you look at what Casey’s doing right now with Hats, White Lotus, Mare of Easttown, Sex in the City coming back; Friends, Friends Reunion, Space Jam having a big week — a big week against a Marvel property,” he said. “They’re sitting on top of just an extraordinary library of IP in Hanna Barbera. All of these things you cannot create.”
Zaslav was very enthusiastic and said that on the heels of all of that, that everyone was excited about the opportunities ahead.
“We look at all of that, and we say we can’t wait to close. We have the broadest, most compelling IP, together with what Discovery has,” he said. “The combination of Harry Potter, King Kong, Batman, together with all of our great nourishing content globally and all of the local content we have all around the world, as well as sports and news, we think that makes us really compelling.”
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discovery+ is a video streaming service that offers more than 70,000 episodes of 2,500+ current and classic shows from several popular TV brands including Discovery, Investigation Discovery, HGTV, TLC, Food Network, A&E, Lifetime, and History.