Who won the streaming wars?

(Image credit: Anna Barclay/Getty Images)

What’s happened?

Hollywood has served up a drama about the guys who make drama – and all the other kinds of entertainment that competes for the world’s eyeballs. In early December 2025, news broke that streaming giant Netflix had agreed an $83 billion deal in cash and shares to buy most of Warner Bros Discovery (WBD). The deal was a shock, given that Warner’s smaller but well-funded rival Paramount had been wooing it for months. Days later, Paramount – recently acquired by the (Larry) Ellison family – went hostile, tabling an alternative offer of $108 billion for the whole company, promising a deal that is “superior to Netflix’s in every dimension”. Paramount has an all-cash offer, funded by unnamed Saudi backers and others including Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The saga probably has months to run.

Why is this such a gripping drama?

Because it’s the biggest Hollywood takeover in years and it’s seen in the industry as a revolutionary moment. Paramount would use Warner to keep something like the old Hollywood alive, while also fighting the streaming wars. But a win for Netflix would be an industry-shaking moment, says Nellie Andreeva on Deadline. Fifteen years ago, the former HBO chief, and CEO of parent Time Warner, Jeff Bewkes, dismissed Netflix as “the Albanian army”. It was a fad that would soon fade away, he reckoned. Just three months later, Netflix outbid Bewkes and HBO for House of Cards, with a bold, two-season, 26-episode order, while HBO would only commit to a pilot and pick-up option. The stunning coup announced Netflix’s arrival as an original programming player and a “disruptor ready to take down the traditional TV industry”.

Netflix is doing well, then?

Incredibly well. In 2022, it looked like Netflix’s blistering ten-year growth streak was over and its shares slid. Since then, it has cracked down on password sharing, raised prices and introduced advertising on cheaper packages – and come back strongly. The firm has even increased its operating margins as it got bigger and the business has matured. Creating content is costly, but adding an extra user is essentially free. As a Bank of America report analysing the proposed WBD deal put it: “If Netflix acquires Warner Bros, the streaming wars are effectively over.” The number one player, Netflix, would acquire the number three player, and “become the undisputed global powerhouse of Hollywood beyond even its currently lofty position”. It would also consolidate the triumph of Silicon Valley over Hollywood, with a third century-old studio being acquired by a new tech businesses, following the purchase of MGM by Amazon, and Oracle’s Larry Ellison securing majority control of Paramount.

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Will regulators approve the deal?

A merger of WBD with either Paramount or Netflix would probably serve to greatly reduce competition in Hollywood, so both deals will be scrutinised. To complicate matters, Donald Trump has made it clear that he’s also taking a close personal interest (he’s chummy with Paramount’s owners), while Paramount has also been playing up the threat of European regulators getting involved. Netflix’s dominance of the streaming market is even greater in Europe than the US, with a 51% share of revenue, and second-placed Disney way behind on just 10%. But while US media magnates and politicians squabble over who should own Warner Bros, others are focused on the “real” streaming wars – meaning that while Netflix may be dominant in streaming, under the broader market definition it really isn’t.

What are the real streaming wars?

YouTube versus all-comers. Paramount, a smallish studio, wants WBD so it can compete with the big dogs. Netflix wants more content for its huge library. But there is a “bigger storyline”, says The Economist – which is that the most popular source of video distraction, for Americans at least, is not Warner, nor any of its suitors, but YouTube. According to ratings agency Nielsen, YouTube accounted for 28% of streaming on TVs in the US in the latest quarter, against Netflix’s 19% (HBO Max made up less than 3%). “Netflix may now be the king of Hollywood”, but it views Warner’s intellectual property assets as weapons in a bigger fight – with competitors outside Hollywood. The streamer is “increasingly pitting its professionally made shows against the home-made, algorithmically sorted content on YouTube and other platforms. The Warner acquisition would give it an arsenal of premium-grade weapons for that war.”

But isn’t there a gulf in quality?

The gap is shrinking, says The Economist. In terms of technology, YouTube videos are increasingly being viewed on TV, and so are Hollywood movies. Business models are converging, too, as streaming platforms move beyond subscription and into advertising, while YouTube’s no-advertising plans have more than 125 million subscribers, about the same as Warner Bros. The third area of overlap is simply content. Streaming platforms are moving into the social-media space: for example, Amazon Prime’s series starring YouTube’s biggest star, Mr Beast, and the rise of “micro dramas”. Conversely, social platforms are offering more TV-like shows, such as YouTube’s Chicken Shop Date.

So it’s game over?

“The streaming wars are over,” says Jackie Snow on Quartz. “YouTube won – and it wasn’t even trying.” While media giants spent billions competing for subscribers, YouTube “quietly built the world’s largest entertainment empire on user-generated videos, cat clips and podcasts, reshaping how we define television itself”. The streaming wars promised to give viewers more choice. They’ve culminated in “the dominance of a platform that gives viewers infinite choice and an algorithm smart enough to help them navigate it”.

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Simon Wilson’s first career was in book publishing, as an economics editor at Routledge, and as a publisher of non-fiction at Random House, specialising in popular business and management books. While there, he published Customers.com, a bestselling classic of the early days of e-commerce, and The Money or Your Life: Reuniting Work and Joy, an inspirational book that helped inspire its publisher towards a post-corporate, portfolio life.

Since 2001, he has been a writer for MoneyWeek, a financial copywriter, and a long-time contributing editor at The Week. Simon also works as an actor and corporate trainer; current and past clients include investment banks, the Bank of England, the UK government, several Magic Circle law firms and all of the Big Four accountancy firms. He has a degree in languages (German and Spanish) and social and political sciences from the University of Cambridge.