Amazon (AMZN) is reportedly nearing a $9 billion deal to buy Hollywood studio MGM Holdings as it seeks ammunition in the streaming wars against competitors like Netflix (NFLX) and Disney (DIS). While Amazon has attracted antitrust scrutiny, legal experts say U.S. regulators are unlikely to stop the e-commerce giant from making its second-biggest acquisition after Whole Foods.
After the Wall Street Journal reported on the impending deal on Monday, George Hay, Cornell Law School professor, told Yahoo Finance that it’s “hard to imagine any basis for blocking the deal.”
That’s largely because the streaming industry is viewed as highly competitive, as evidenced by AT&T’s (T) recent decision to spin off Time Warner less than three years after spending $85 billion on the media giant and defeating an antitrust challenge of its own from the Trump administration’s Justice Department.
Another clue the streaming space is competitive: Just last month, Netflix sharply missed on its subscriber goals when it reported earnings, a loss partly attributed to an increasing crowd of competitors in the streaming space like Disney+, Hulu, AppleTV+ (AAPL) and, yes, Amazon. In addition to being the “everything store” and a cloud giant, Amazon creates some original movies and TV shows like “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”
