Don’t hit pause — why the Netflix-Warner Bros. merger should proceed

One of 2025’s most closely watched acquisition targets is Warner Bros. Discovery, the media conglomerate that owns HBO Max. As the streaming landscape has become increasingly complex and competitive, potential buyers have begun preparing bids to purchase the company.

Enter the bidders: Netflix and Paramount. After rounds of competing offers, shareholders appear ready to accept Netflix’s all-cash bid. It’s a straightforward market transaction: a merger between household names, shareholders choosing to sell at a price they find attractive, and consumers potentially benefiting from better content investment and platform integration.

So naturally, Washington wants to intervene.

In a letter to Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, Chair of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, warned that “if consummated, the acquisition could eliminate a major competitor, consolidate control over an extensive content library, and increase bargaining power over creators and talent.” But that is simply another way of describing what competitive markets routinely produce: companies buying and selling assets, combining libraries, and pursuing efficiencies that they believe will better position them to serve viewers.

Democrats went further, predictably. Sen. Elizabeth Warren claimed the deal “would create one massive media giant with control of close to half of the streaming market, threatening to force Americans into higher subscription prices and fewer choices over what and how they watch, while putting American workers at risk.” Never mind that combining Netflix with Warner Bros.’ share still leaves Disney, Amazon, Apple, YouTube, and others as formidable competitors. Warren’s math only works if you ignore most of the broader attention economy.

In deciding whether to block this merger (and that’s the real question), federal lawmakers and antitrust regulators should remember what antitrust law is actually for. Since Robert Bork’s The Antitrust Paradox reshaped the field in the 1970s, antitrust analysis has been guided by the consumer welfare standard, not a vague suspicion that size alone is harmful. The relevant questions are concrete: Will this merger raise prices, reduce quality, stifle innovation or limit consumer choice?

If the answer is no, then regulators have no legitimate basis for intervention. Blocking a voluntary, market-driven transaction that aims to create stronger, more efficient competitor risks undermining exactly the consumer benefits antitrust law is supposed to protect—such as lower costs through economies of scale, improved content offerings, and better technology and user experience. Abandoning the consumer welfare standard doesn’t safeguard consumers; it replaces clear rules with subjective political judgments about which business strategies regulators prefer.

Federal opposition also reveals regulators’ fundamental misunderstanding of the market they’re attempting to control. Antitrust enforcers fixate on streaming market share as if it exists in a vacuum: Netflix holds 21%, Warner Bros. Discovery’s HBO Max has 13%, Disney+ claims 12%, with Hulu, Paramount+, and Apple TV+ fighting for the remainder. Such market shares fall well short of monopoly power worthy of government intervention

But even that framing is too narrow. Streaming services don’t just compete with each other. They compete against YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, gaming, podcasts, and yes, even cable television. The average American has infinite entertainment options and finite attention. Regulators have no business blocking business combinations in this competitive market. Defining the relevant market as “streaming services only” is exactly the kind of arbitrary line-drawing that justifies endless bureaucratic meddling.

When lawmakers and federal regulators review the acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, they should keep a basic principle in mind: their role is to prevent demonstrable consumer harm, higher prices, reduced quality, or diminished choice, not to second-guess business strategy or preemptively veto industry consolidation that emerges from voluntary market transactions. In a competitive market, the presumption should favor market freedom and the discipline of competition, not bureaucratic micromanagement.

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Dr. Edward Longe is the director of national strategy and the Center for Technology and Innovation at The James Madison Institute.