What Happened to Paramount's Rumoured Merger with Apple TV+?

In December of 2023, the streaming industry saw a surge of reports that Paramount+ was considering a merger with Apple TV+. The rumoured merger could have struck a devastating blow to industry leaders like Netflix and Disney. Since then, the rumours of this merger have died down in favour of a new, developing story.

Apple's Streaming Competition

Apple's foray into streamed media saw it enter a market full of heavy hitters like Netflix, Amazon and most legacy broadcasters. It's a competitive scene that is only getting more challenging for streamers who aren't at the top of the pile. This won't change anytime soon, as streamed content now dominates most forms of entertainment.

Elsewhere online, video-sharing and iGaming sites rely on the same tech to deliver content at the user's convenience. Some casino sites stream live, interactive tables like the Lightning Roulette game offered by Betfair, where the action is hosted by real human dealers. The convenience and versatility of streaming plus the option to stream live for interactive content, has most entertainment industries switching to streaming-based content models. Netflix discovered the power of streaming first, and since 2019, they have had no shortage of competitors in the video space.

Apple TV+ did well in 2023, helped by the fact that their film division, Apple Studios, produced two noteworthy flicks that attracted a lot of press. Those were Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon and Ridley Scott's Napoleon, both long-running historical epics that produced conversations about their subject matter, but also their development and what they mean for the movie industry going forward. For example, publications like The Guardian reported that streaming is perfect for longer epics. Scorsese's epic was also co-distributed by Paramount Pictures, and then both movies landed on Apple TV+ for home audiences once their theatrical runs ended. Not long after, the merger rumours started.

Paramount's Merger Rumours

At the time, we reported that the platforms may join forces. The Wall Street Journal broke the story, where Apple and Paramount were planning to bundle their respective streaming services together. Analysts hailed the potential merger as a solution to both streamers' woes, namely Paramount's profitability and Apple's smaller library compared to market leaders.

Almost halfway through 2024, that merger has yet to materialise. Paramount is going through some drastic reshuffling, as it's reported that Paramount Global chairwoman Shari Redstone is dead set on selling Paramount+ into a merger deal. The newest merger news stories indicate that Redstone didn't bite at the Apple deal and has started pursuing Skydance Media instead. Skydance is the media enterprise behind the post-2010 Mission: Impossible franchise and billion-dollar hits like Top Gun: Maverick.

Much like Apple, Skydance Media has co-produced several movies alongside Paramount's studios. In searching for a merger, it seems that Paramount started looking down its list of partners. Skydance has a much longer history with Paramount, making them a more likely candidate than Apple despite the initial rumours. Now Skydance is in active negotiations with Paramount, whose CEO Bob Bakish has left the company at the end of April 2024.

Now, it has been revealed that Apple Inc. focused on a different kind of acquisition in the same period. While rumours swirled around their streaming division, they pulled off a stealth acquisition with DarwinAI. The company aims to create smaller neural networks, leading analysts to speculate that Apple will try to deliver on-mobile AI models instead of relying on the cloud.