{"id":1996985,"date":"2025-09-04T15:43:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T15:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=1996985"},"modified":"2025-09-04T15:43:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T15:43:08","slug":"spe-ceo-says-media-consolidation-very-unlikely-in-near-term","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/spe-ceo-says-media-consolidation-very-unlikely-in-near-term\/","title":{"rendered":"SPE CEO Says Media Consolidation ‘Very Unlikely’ in Near-Term"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Despite Hollywood executives long warning that the entertainment industry is ripe for consolidation, Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Ravi Ahuja believes its \u201cvery unlikely\u201d to happen in the near-term.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there\u2019ll be a little bit of deconsolidation and consolidation. I think there could be a little bit. I don\u2019t think there\u2019ll be a ton of it,\u201d the executive told an investor conference hosted by Bank of America on Thursday. \u201cI don\u2019t think that we\u2019ll go down to three companies the way music did. I don\u2019t think that happens in video. I think it\u2019s too varied and the companies are too large. So I think that\u2019s very unlikely in the near term. Who knows in the very long term?\u201d <\/p>\n

When asked about Sony Pictures Entertainment\u2019s M&A strategy specifically, Ahuja said he doesn\u2019t think the studio will be sold, calling it an \u201cintegral part to the machinery\u201d of the Japanese multinational conglomerate. <\/p>\n

As for being an acquirer, he said it depends on the deal, but noted he\u2019s \u201cvery wary of scale for its own sake.\u201d Last year, SPE notably teamed up with Apollo Global Management on a $26 billion bid for Paramount Global.<\/a> However, a deal would not end up materializing and Paramount was acquired by David Ellison\u2019s Skydance Media instead for $8 billion. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look back at the deals that have been done in the last 30 years, there are very few of those large scale deals that have worked well. I think the deals that have tended to work well are the ones like Disney buying Marvel, buying Lucasfilm, buying Pixar. Bolt-on deals that fit well with the system that you have work incredibly well,\u201d Ahuja said. \u201cBut Fox and Disney coming together, Warner and Discovery, Warner and AT&T, Warner and AOL, Warner and Time Inc, these deals are very hard to execute. These are complex businesses with multiple business units that deal with each other and it becomes so complicated. The quote I use all the time, it\u2019s attributed to David Packard, is more businesses die of indigestion than starvation. It\u2019s completely true. If you\u2019re just stuck internally negotiating with each other, you can\u2019t do a great job in the marketplace.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, Ahuja emphasized Sony is \u201cvery interested in IP\u201d and \u201ccapabilities that can enhance our existing sense of assets,\u201d such as its acquisition of Alamo Drafthouse. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think focus always beats scale. And I think the idea of just merging with other companies because you can have more market share in our business is very dangerous,\u201d he added. \u201cThese aren\u2019t factories. I think making great content requires focused teams and I think if they sit in HR meetings about laying people off constantly, they\u2019re not very creative. I don\u2019t think that economies of scale work in the media business very well.\u201d<\/p>\n

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When asked about consolidation amongst streaming services, Ahuja expressed similar skepticism. <\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe one or two will consolidate, but if there are seven or eight general entertainment streaming services, I don\u2019t see that going down to three or four. I really don\u2019t. I think a lot of the companies that own streaming services are quite strong and I don\u2019t see them not doing it,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe they become more focused and more programmed, but I don\u2019t think they\u2019ll go away meaningfully.\u201d<\/p>\n

He believes that more and more services will continue to bundle their content together.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do think that the platforms will continue to be successful with the channel bundles they create. Amazon\u2019s probably the farthest ahead. We with Crunchyroll, have a lot of subscribers through Amazon\u2019s channels program. So I think that\u2019ll become more and more attractive to streaming services,\u201d Ahuja said. \u201cFor streaming services, the trade off is you don\u2019t have as much of a direct consumer relationship. It\u2019s almost like a return in the cable model. But that\u2019s a more efficient model. So I think that\u2019s where it goes. But the whole challenge in the business is the cost side of it, which is very hard to manage.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.thewrap.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite Hollywood executives long warning that the entertainment industry is ripe for consolidation, Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Ravi Ahuja believes its \u201cvery unlikely\u201d to happen in the near-term. \u201cI think there\u2019ll be a little bit of deconsolidation and consolidation. I think there could be a little bit. I don\u2019t think there\u2019ll be a ton of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1950027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1996985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/All-the-Songs-in-the-Sequel.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1996985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1996985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1996985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1950027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1996985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1996985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1996985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}