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If there is some kind of future deal, there could be some antitrust issues, more so if NBCU is not the buyer but the entity being sold. Diana Moss, vice president and director of competition policy at the Progressive Policy Institute, wrote via email, “If it is a bigger player, then the question is whether that creates higher concentration in streaming. Who they sell to is more complicated than most would think.”
As for Comcast, she wrote that there may be issues with a combination in an industry that already has seen the proposed merger of Charter with Cox. She wrote, “There is pretty high concentration in cable and digital broadcast satellite multi-video programming distribution. Some past cable mergers have been controversial for that reason.” She wrote that she would expect “political intervention by Trump” and other regulators. “Sad…,” she wrote.
For now, Comcast is dismissing M&A talk, but there also is the matter of timing. If a Democrat is elected to the White House in 2028, the pressure on the new president could be on to take an overall hard line against mergers, creating something of a scramble to get deals through even in a Trump-influenced environment.
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