The Streaming Wars

Paramount has officially closed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery completing a deal valued at roughly $111 billion including debt. The combined company, Skydance, puts Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., HBO, CBS, CNN and two major streaming services under David Ellison’s…

Roku sits at the center of a broader push by retailers, media companies and ad-tech firms to control more of the TV interface, from discovery and subscriptions to advertising, data and payments. Walmart, Amazon, Best Buy and The Trade Desk…

McDonald’s is testing third-party ads on drive-thru screens as it builds a broader media network across its restaurants, app and kiosks. The company sees a billion-dollar opportunity in monetizing traffic and screens its core business already pays to generate, with…

Bango, Paramount, and AT&T show how growth gets more profitable when companies can reuse infrastructure, systems, and customer relationships they’ve already paid for. The real leverage comes from adding revenue without adding another stack, vendor, workflow, or team.

Netflix will launch its ad-supported plan in nine additional European markets on March 1, 2027, extending its advertising business across an existing subscriber base. The expansion gives Netflix more regional scale, but monetization will depend on local pricing, advertiser demand,…

Disney’s licensing a broad slate of films and series to Netflix, with short windows around franchises like *Percy Jackson* and *Ice Age* timed ahead of new Disney-controlled releases. The model gives Disney licensing revenue while testing whether Netflix exposure can…

Basics of Streaming examines how global expansion multiplies complexity across rights, localization, pricing, payments, regulation, and devices. Services that standardize and automate those workflows can add markets without adding proportional cost and headcount, improving operating leverage as they scale.

From the Archives revisits how Hotstar used cricket to drive app installs, advertising, and subscription growth at massive scale. Disney’s loss of IPL digital rights showed how quickly that audience could move, while JioHotstar now expands the model by combining…

Looper Insights’ Lucas Bertrand breaks down the economics of TV home-screen real estate, where every premium placement comes with a tradeoff between paid promotion, partner commitments, owned programming, and personalized discovery. With 71% of surveyed executives saying measurement gaps are…

Andrew Wamugi lays out why the WNBA's expanded media rights strategy still has a streaming problem, with some USA Network playoff games locked behind the pay-TV bundle. Versant already has a potential fix in Fandango, which could extend those games…

Paramount’s $6 billion-plus synergy plan now has to work around protections for theatrical output, production spending, studio lots, and cable negotiations, putting more pressure on duplicated corporate and technology operations. With roughly $79 billion of net debt expected at closing,…

Skip examines how mid-sized streamers can navigate TV operating systems that increasingly control discovery, distribution, and customer acquisition. The key is understanding where they have leverage, what they’re giving up, and whether the economics ultimately drive profitable growth.