Ari Emanuel, executive chairman of William Morris Endeavor (WME), has endorsed the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger.
Emanuel expressed his thoughts about the merger in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal where he said that the current antitrust lawsuits filed by state attorneys general miss the mark.
“When government officials manipulate markets to reach political outcomes, antitrust stops protecting competition and starts threatening it,” Emanuel writes. “The attorneys general should drop this case and get back to enforcing the laws as they are written. Let Hollywood creatives get back to trying to rip each other’s heads off at the box office, in streaming, online and everywhere else we compete. It’s what we’re best at.”
Emanuel further argued that the antitrust suit “doesn’t remotely reflect reality” due to competition from Amazon, Netflix, and Apple.
“The attorneys general don’t get to ignore the platforms that compete every day for audiences, talent, capital and content just because it makes their case harder,” he wrote. “Believe me, as somebody who’s in those rooms, every green light, marketing budget and release date is decided against the reality of that broadly competitive environment.”
As Breitbart News reported this week, Paramount has paused the merger until it resolves all pending lawsuits following a judge’s restraining order last week.
“On Monday, a federal judge suggested that the $81 billion merger be temporarily halted for at least two weeks as activist lawsuits continue to plague the deal,” said the report. “Now, Paramount has agreed to put the deal on ice until at least June 1, 2027, or until the lawsuits are concluded.”
“The biggest issue is the lawsuit spearheaded by California’s Democrat Attorney General Rob Bonta, who is leading a 12-state coalition in a lawsuit aimed at squashing the proposed merger,” it added. “Other states in the filing include Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Washington.”
Emanuel’s sports and entreatment company TKO has received a reported $7 billion from Ellison’s Paramount to exclusively air UFC matches.