Big Government Wants to Rig the Streaming Wars

Days ago, Sen. Cory Booker held a hearing to attack the recently announced merger between entertainment companies Warner Bros. and Paramount-Skydance. Booker warned that the impacts of the merger would be “damaging and far-reaching.”

Left out of Booker’s broadside was that before Paramount stepped in, Netflix had tried to buy Warner Bros. That deal truly would have been damaging.

Why? Today’s streaming market is defined by one simple reality: Netflix sits at the top.

Netflix earned its position, but dominance has consequences. Over the past few years, Netflix has repeatedly raised prices and tightened account-sharing rules, testing how much consumers are willing to pay.

This is what market leaders do when competitive pressure is limited. And combining Netflix with Warner Bros.’ vast content library only would have made it worse.

The question for regulators reviewing the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery deal is therefore straightforward: would this transaction increase or decrease the competitive pressure within the entertainment industry?

The answer is clear. Unlike the Netflix purchase, it would increase it.

Paramount on its own is a relatively small player in a market where size determines who can compete. Content is expensive. Distribution is expensive. Reaching global audiences requires sustained investment: without scale, even well-known brands struggle to keep up.

Combining Paramount with Warner Bros. Discovery changes that equation. It creates a company with the content library, reach, and financial capacity to genuinely compete with other major platforms like Netflix.

Critics often treat consolidation as inherently suspect, and sometimes it’s a problem. But context matters. In a fragmented market, mergers can reduce competition, while in a market already shaped by a dominant player, they can create it.

Given Netflix’s dominant status in the streaming market — it has 300 million subscribers, more than double that of its closest competitor — Paramount needs to be bigger if it’s going to compete.

Hence why axing this deal wouldn’t protect consumers. It would protect the status quo.

Some of the opposition to the merger doesn’t focus on prices or consumer choice, but discomfort with the outcome itself. That is a problem.

Antitrust enforcement only works if it remains grounded in consistent standards. Once decisions start to hinge on which companies are viewed as more acceptable — politically or culturally — the rules become harder to predict. Firms hesitate. Investment slows. And the very competition regulators aim to protect becomes harder to sustain.

The risk is not just inconsistency, but a gradual shift toward the government picking winners. Consumers do not benefit from that; they benefit when companies are forced to compete — on price, on quality, and on innovation.

In streaming, that means more than just a collection of smaller platforms struggling to keep up with Netflix. It means viable challengers with the scale to invest and the reach to matter. A combined Paramount-Warner company would be exactly that.

None of this means the deal should receive a free pass. Large transactions deserve scrutiny. Regulators should ask whether the merger would lead to higher prices, reduced output, or new barriers to entry.

But these concerns need to be demonstrated, not assumed. If critics believe prices will rise, they need to explain how that would happen in a market where multiple platforms compete for subscribers. If they worry about less content, they need to show that a larger, better-capitalized company would invest less rather than more.

So far, these arguments remain thin.

What is clear is the competitive dynamic. Netflix has scale. Others are trying to catch up. This deal helps one of them do so. That is not a threat to competition. It is how competition is built.

Antitrust policy is at its strongest when it focuses on outcomes rather than optics. When it asks whether consumers will benefit, not whether the result aligns with shifting political preferences. The Paramount deal should be judged on that basis.

A stronger competitor in a concentrated market means more pressure on prices, more investment in content, and more choice for consumers.

In the end, that is the standard that should matter.

Ashley Clapper Bennett is an attorney with Corbin & Clapper, PC. She is a member of the Central Texas Republican Women and the Texas Federation of Republican Women and a former candidate for the 146th Judicial District Court.