This Future of TV Briefing covers the latest in streaming and TV for Digiday+ members and is distributed via email every Wednesday at 10 a.m. ET. More from the series →
This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at the M&A deals that might be in the offing after an active first half of 2026.
Remember the merger-mania period of the late 2010s? Disney-Twentieth Century Fox. Discovery-Scripps. AT&T-Time Warner. Viacom-CBS. Televisa-Univision. Well, the mid-2020s are beginning to feel like that.
This year alone, Paramount Skydance is closing in on Warner Bros. Discovery (presumably). Fox has agreed to buy Roku. And Comcast has decided to spin out NBCUniversal. All of which raises the question: What other potential deals are on the table?
In the spirit of summer being a time to sit back and prepare for the fall and future, here’s a wildly speculative rundown of three more mega-deals that could be on the horizon, along with conditions for why they might or might not happen and the circumstances under which they should happen.
Disclaimer: I won’t be getting into the regulatory challenges or financial considerations of any of these deals because with this government and this economy, who the hell knows….
Netflix-NBCUniversal
Netflix has already signaled it’s in the market for a traditional media company with its failed bid for WBD. And for as much as Comcast-NBCU experts have said that NBCU is “absolutely not” for sale post-split, c’mon.
Case for: Netflix wants more live sports, and NBCU would bring NFL, NBA, WNBA, MLB, college football, PGA, Premier League and, oh yeah, Olympics rights. Meanwhile, NBCUniversal needs more streaming scale given Peacock only has a 1.7% share of TV viewing time, ranking eighth among streaming services. Additionally, while NBCU might keep FreeWheel’s ad tech stack post-split despite the latter seeming poised to stay with Comcast, who knows what Comcast might do with it? And as Disney and Fox have shown – let alone YouTube and Amazon – it can be valuable for a streaming company to own its ad tech stack, and Netflix has been building its own with Netflix Ads Suite.
Case against: As big a deal as this would be, it might not really address Netflix’s biggest vulnerability. Sure, it would give Netflix more high-quality, advertiser-friendly, subscriber-sticky programming. But how much would that help in catching up to YouTube, which has been running away with the TV viewing-time race? Plus, Netflix didn’t want WBD’s traditional TV networks (aside from HBO).
The trigger: If YouTube succeeds in acquiring more rights to major live sports, Netflix will have to respond. Meanwhile – when excluding Versant, which was spun off from NBCU last year – NBCU is already ranked seventh among all distributors when it comes to TV viewing time, which doesn’t look great on a pitch deck.
Walmart-The Trade Desk
Walmart’s acquisitions of Vizio and Vibe.co signal the Amazon rival is looking to copy its nemesis’s CTV advertising playbook. And The Trade Desk could use all the help it can get.
Case for: Walmart’s ad tech business is ascendant, but it’s missing a key piece that Amazon and Google both have: a demand-side platform. Meanwhile, TTD has been under fire for over a year, and its biggest vulnerability has been its relative lack of proprietary data. With TTD, Walmart would get its hands on the leading rival to Amazon’s and Google’s buy-side technology. And with Walmart, TTD would get the kind of backing that has quieted criticisms of Amazon’s and Google’s less-than-transparent ad tech from becoming full-throated rejections.
Case against: Didn’t Walmart already buy a stake in TTD only to decide it wasn’t enough and that it needed to stick with – checking notes – Google’s DSP? Yup. And wouldn’t being owned by Walmart nullify one of TTD’s main selling points – its independence – null and void? Uh-huh.
The trigger: TTD’s stock price has already fallen by more than 80% since February 2025, including by nearly 50% this year alone. If that trend continues, something has to give. And the more TTD’s stock price drops, the less Walmart would have to pay to scoop it up.
Beast Industries-Mattel
The creator economy is itching for a major deal. It’s been a decade since Maker Studios sold to Disney, Fullscreen sold to AT&T and Machinima sold to Warner Bros. Sure, there have been a bunch of deals for influencer marketing agencies. But the creator economy is finally being embraced by Hollywood (minus the people with Emmy ballots). It’s time for a deal that crosses the rubicon.
Case for: Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson has built a company worth $5 billion largely on his skill at producing entertainment that half a billion people tune into. He’s parlayed that into traditional TV (streaming, but streaming is TV) as well as physical products like candy, snacks and toys. In other words, he has established a highly successful IP flywheel. Mattel, meanwhile, has a ton of IP and has been trying to do the same but in the wrong way under Ynon Kreiz, the former Endemol executive who spearheaded the toy maker’s push into entertainment with “Barbie” and had overseen Maker Studios through its sale to Disney.
Case against: Beast Industries is in the toy business, but not like Mattel is in the toy business. The former does licensing deals for other companies to make its toys, whereas the latter’s main business is manufacturing toys, many of which are produced in China. So Beast Industries wouldn’t just be taking on great IP but also a legacy business that’s beyond the scope of its current operation.
The trigger: Mattel’s market cap has shrunk by roughly a third this year, bringing the company’s valuation lower than Beast Industries. And though Beast Industries remains on an upswing, its business is still primarily oriented around Donaldson. So while Beast Industries CEO Jeff Housenbold likens Donaldson to Walt Disney, eventually Disney had to diversify beyond Mickey Mouse – an evolution that looks very top of mind for Housenbold.
What we’ve heard
“That level of automation for content, it really works, but it will drive content to being boring.”
— PMG’s Jennifer Quigley-Jones on AI agent use in influencer marketing
Numbers to know
22: Number of people of color who received an Emmy nomination this year, the lowest count since 2015.
46%: Percentage share of people who said they’ve missed a game because they didn’t know where it was streaming.
25%: Percentage share of AI assistant responses that cite YouTube creators’ videos.
25%: Percentage share of advertising professionals who said they use AI for influencer marketing work.
What we’ve covered
Inside the newsroom push to turn print reporters into video talent:
- Some publications are building formal “talent labs” with structured training and workflows.
- Others are taking a looser approach, simply putting more journalists in front of a camera and iterating from there.
Read more about newsrooms’ video talent here.
How streaming World Cup creators built a new broadcast blueprint:
- Creator-led streams have helped FIFA reach younger, global audiences that traditional sports coverage has struggled to reach.
- Darren “IShowSpeed” Watkins Jr.’s sideline World Cup livestreams (in which he records himself reacting to the game, rather than the field) have gotten hundreds of thousands of views each on both Twitch and YouTube internationally.
Read more about creators’ World Cup coverage here.
How Unilever uses AI to manage its growing creator network:
- Unilever is happy handing over administrative tasks and forms to automated tools.
- One tool lets Unilever brands scan videos on social media and find people who share certain stories about its products to potentially use for its creator marketing efforts.
Read more about AI in creator marketing here.
Advertisers see upside in Sky’s ITV deal:
- Two of the U.K.’s biggest broadcast players will operate under the same umbrella with a combined business spanning 40 million viewers a month on subscription TV, multiple streaming services, and free-to-air broadcast.
- Whether ITVX and Sky parent Comcast’s own streaming services might end up merged, or how the combined companies might meld their ad sales teams, technology and behind-the-scenes infrastructure, has so far been left unsaid by the executives behind the deal.
Read more about the Sky-ITV deal here.
What we’re reading
States’ bid to block Paramount-WBD:
California and 11 other states have sued to block Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery over antitrust concerns, according to CNBC.
Netflix’s live TV play:
Declining subscriber engagement is spurring Netflix to explore adding live channels and subscription bundles, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Disney+’s free tier play:
The House of Mouse is considering adding a free, ad-supported tier to Disney+ to better compete with YouTube and Tubi according to Business Insider.
IAB’s digital video dictionary:
The industry group has developed a framework for defining digital video viewing experiences and signals, according to AdExchanger.
