Netflix co-chief CEO Ted Sarandos has spoken out for the first time since losing the bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery.
Sarandos gave the interview to Lucas Shaw at Bloomberg, where he didn’t mince words about losing out to Paramount.
In the Q&A, Shaw mentioned that Sarandos was “dealing with an unusual other buyer.”
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“Unusual, yeah, unusual, irrational, whatever words you want to use in that,” Sarandos said. “It’ll be fascinating to see the next steps. I have been on the record a lot in the last two weeks talking about what I think the future looks like. I’m confident in our future that we’re not impacted by all that. In fact, maybe it’s to our advantage. But I hope I’m wrong for the sake of the industry.”
He also spoke about President Trump’s political pressure and if he thought it “spooked” Warner Bros. shareholders.
“It’s a lot cheaper to make noise than it is to actually raise your bid,” Sarandos said. “So they tried that path first. Once it was clear that we weren’t in the CNN business, it was a lot less interesting. He didn’t care that much more about our deal.”
Sarandos also discussed why Netflix ultimately decided to throw in the towel on the deal.
“We had a very tight range that we’d be willing to pay and made that offer back when we closed this deal,” he said. “We hadn’t moved much from that, except for moving to cash, which served to move the deal faster. I’m happy where we got in and happy where we got out. We knew right away, when we got the notice on Thursday that they had a superior offer and the details of that deal. We knew exactly what we were going to do.”
Read the full interview here.
