YouTube has quite suddenly become a key player in Netflix‘s plans to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery.
The streamer announced last week that it would get a Hollywood level-up by purchasing Warner Bros. Discovery’s studio and streaming assets in a deal valued at $82.7 billion (aka $27.75 per share). That deal came after a tense bidding war–and one of the losers isn’t going down without a fight
On Dec. 8, Paramount launched a hostile bid, offering $30/share for the Warner Bros. film studio, Game of Thrones home HBO and other cable TV brands, and streaming service HBO Max. The bid’s federal securities filing indicates it’s backed by funding from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE, plus cash from Affinity Partners, the Jared Kushner-founded firm that also just acquired Electronic Arts in a $55 billion deal.
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As part of its pitch, Paramount (which, stop us if you’ve heard this before, also recently acquired Skydance Media, becoming the Paramount Skydance Corporation) pointed out that Netflix’s deal has to pass muster with regulators, and insists its own offer “provides a superior alternative to the Netflix transaction.”
“Our public offer, which is on the same terms we provided to the Warner Bros. Discovery Board of Directors in private, provides superior value, and a more certain and quicker path to completion,” David Ellison, Paramount’s CEO, said in a statement.
That “quicker path to completion” is where YouTube comes in. Netflix–or, at least, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos–has been somewhat bitter about YouTube being the #1 most-watched streaming service in the U.S. for over two years running. In the wake of Nielsen’s numbers confirming YouTube’s supremacy, Sarandos hasn’t missed an opportunity to try putting YouTube and its creators in their place–but that hasn’t changed the simple fact that YouTube is the reigning king.
And apparently, Netflix is only too happy to call on the king when it’s convenient.
On the same day Paramount filed its hostile bid, Sarandos’s fellow co-CEO, Greg Peters, used his time onstage at the 2025 Global Media and Communications Conference to point out that if the Netflix/Warner Bros. deal closes, the new entity will still be behind YouTube in terms of watch time.
“We go from 8% of viewed hours today in the United States to 9%. We’re still behind YouTube at 13%,” he said. (HBO Max currently accounts for around 1.2% of watch time in the U.S., according to Nielsen.)
Meanwhile, he specifically pointed out, if Paramount acquired Warner Bros., their newly combined portion of U.S. viewership would jump to 13.8%. That would put them above YouTube–and, he seems to be insinuating, means Paramount is a bigger anticompetitive threat than Netflix.
“We think that there’s a really strong fundamentals-based case here for why regulators should approve this deal,” Peters added.
Netflix previously estimated it would take between 12 and 18 months for regulators to approve its Warner Bros. deal. It’s not clear whether that timeline will be disrupted by Paramount’s last-ditch bid–but what is clear is that Netflix considers YouTube its most serious competitor…and is willing to invoke its name, so long as Netflix is the one that benefits in the end.
