If the prevailing wisdom among media executives the last several years was “it’s not worth trying to buy our rival, or scale up with a bolt-on acquisition, because it’ll get tangled up in red tape government reviews” then, post-Election Day, the mood has swung the other way rapidly to “expect a deal bonanza next year.”
Accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers’ latest closely-watched forecast formalizes this sentiment: “we expect a robust 2025 M&A market due to pent-up demand which may have been sidelined due to regulatory concerns,” its media and telecom deals outlook, released Thursday, forecasts.
Those concerns were the roadblocks set up by the Biden administration that looked to rein in what they viewed as anti-competitive megadeals — for example, blocking Paramount’s $2.2 billion sale of Simon & Schuster to rival publisher Penguin RandomHouse and challenging Microsoft’s $69 billion bid to buy Activision — under regulatory agencies led by merger hawks Lina Khan and Jonathan Kanter, as well as Federal Communications Commission chair Jessica Rosenworcel.
Trump’s pick for the FTC chair, Andrew Ferguson, has pitched that he’d like to “reverse Lina Khan’s anti-business agenda” by repealing “burdensome regulations” while the President-elect’s choice of Brendan Carr for FCC chair was greeted warmly by media companies (Comcast, Nexstar offered congrats) as well as industry trade organizations (The National Association of Broadcasters). So, in its outlook, PwC sees the pick as forshadowing of the climate ahead.
“President-elect Donald Trump’s appointment of Brendan Carr as FCC chair and the anticipation of Lina Khan’s FTC replacement suggest a return to a pro-deregulation agenda,” PwC’s report, led by principal Bart Spiegel, reads. “This move could accelerate consolidation, empowering dominant players to expand their market control.”
Think of the deals that weren’t done this year: In April, a lockup window for M&A involving Warner Bros. Discovery quietly passed without any blockbuster acquisition, divestment or merger. (Bank of America analysts this summer had estimated that, for example, CNN could potentially be worth $6 billion if spun off, and had also floated the idea of separating Warners’ cable channel assets like TNT and TBS from its studios business.)
Meanwhile, mini-major studios like Lionsgate and well-capitalized upstarts like A24 remain independent studios, same with smaller TV players like AMC Networks. (Although there’s another new effort from some corners to push Lionsgate to sell.) And, while it’s been rumored nearly every year, Apple didn’t uses its spare change to buy a major studio to fuel its streaming ambitions yet.
Not to mention that Comcast waited until after the election to unveil its plan to spin off cable channels like MSNBC, CNBC, USA Network, Oxygen and E! into a separate holding company in a deal expected to close in late 2025.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve seen so many favorable variables align in anticipation of a robust 2025 mergers and acquisitions (M&A) market,” PwC notes in its outlook. “Advances in AI, dry powder at an all-time high, changing regulatory bodies and transformative M&A already announced should provoke media and telecom to move aggressively in 2025.”
Yet, even in the apparent relative doldrums of this year, dealmaking rebounded somewhat in the second-half of 2024 compared to its quieter first six months. “Seven megadeals made up 63 percent of the disclosed deal value in the media and telecommunications sector in 2024,” PwC adds. “We see continued motivation to pursue megadeals given their ability to reshape industries, consolidate markets and create long-term value through synergies and new opportunities.”
