Skydance and Paramount Global: A Closer Look Into 2025
The deal won’t close until 2025, which is not surprising as complicated as it is structured and akin to many such acquisitions of large, publicly-traded firms.
Here are a few of the key points listed in this fine article. Most consumers care the most about the impact to CBS Sports and live sports on Paramount+.
- Regulatory approvals will likely take a while. Company officials are targeting a closing in the first half of 2025. But the last time a major U.S. broadcast network changed hands—NBC during Comcast’s ’11 acquisition of NBCUniversal—nearly 14 months elapsed between the initial announcement of the deal and approval from the Federal Communications Commission and Department of Justice.
What this timeline would suggest is that perhaps at least for 1H2025, we just might retain what is at hand for CBS Sports, including UEFA Champions League, just as it is available now. The real tell will be what will change for NFL coverage and accesibility for the 2025 season, if anything at all.
- Familiar faces will be leading the newly combined entity. The merged Paramount-Skydance will be overseen by David Ellison, Skydance founder, as chairman and CEO, and Jeff Shell, former NBCUniversal CEO, as president. Most recently, Shell has been chairman of RedBird Sports and Media.
Jeff Shell is an industry heavyweight who was fired from Comcast in April 2023 due to a complaint of sexual harassment via an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate, who was his mistress:
I had no idea he was in the mix for this venture.
- Significant cost cuts are coming. Even before the deal closing, Paramount said in a company memo that it will move forward on actions such as “streamlining teams, eliminating duplicative functions, and reducing the size of our workforce.” In a call early Monday with investors, Shell said $2 billion in cost efficiencies have been identified, adding that “we’ve got to run these businesses in a different way” amid ongoing media disruption.
That’s an awful lot more layoffs than have already been at hand. How many of those layoffs that are associated with CBS Sports will be telling.
As Ellison and Shell laid out to analysts a goal of being a “winner” in streaming, suggesting potential partnerships that would advance bundling already happening across the industry, the executives additionally said that sports will remain a key part of the merged company.
It will be interesting to see what partnerships will be at hand for Paramount+, which is a business reality it lacks compared to its streaming competitors.