Netflix is not relinquishing its throne anytime soon. The king of streaming is here to stay

For years, we talked endlessly about the so-called Streaming Wars. For a brief period, the battlefield was wide open, with Netflix holding a narrow advantage through sheer global reach. HBO Max countered with an unmatched prestige library, Disney Plus arrived fully armed with Star Wars, Marvel, and a family friendly catalogue while Apple, the late entrant, quietly built legitimacy by prioritising quality over volume and delivering genuine breakout hits.

Years later, the war is over.

From the smoke and wreckage, one victor emerges. The drums beat a familiar, monotonous rhythm: tudum.

Netflix didn’t merely survive the conflict. It won it. While competitors merged, dropped out or quietly lost momentum, Netflix continued to grow. Then came the finishing blow: the company launched a bid to acquire Warner Bros Discovery for $82.7 billion. The proposal includes Warner Bros Studios, DC Studios, and New Line Cinema, with the Discovery brand, including CNN, spun off into a separate entity.

Much like Thanos, the deal looked inevitable.

Then Paramount, effectively controlled by the Ellison family, entered the fray with a hostile all cash offer of 108.8 billion dollars, encompassing all Warner Bros Discovery assets.

The WBD board is now tasked with weighing both bids while also securing approval from the US Federal Communications Commission, which must determine whether either deal constitutes an unlawful concentration of media power.

Officially, this is business. Unofficially, it is anything but.

The Ellison family are vocal supporters of US President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly expressed hostility toward CNN. Having a friendly owner in control of a major news outlet critical of his administration would undoubtedly make regulatory approval easier to navigate.

In the end, it may not matter.

Paramount lacks both the strategic clarity and operational discipline required to manage Warner Bros’ sprawling portfolio of IPs. Sooner or later, key assets will be sold off, and when that happens, Netflix will be waiting. No self-respecting media company allows a one-man cinematic universe like Taylor Sheridan to walk to a competitor without consequences.

Netflix is driven by profit and scale. Paramount is driven by politics.

And in the long run, money always talks.

Politics aside, why would Netflix dig this deep for Warner Bros Discovery? There are four reasons why the merger makes absolute sense for the streaming behemoth.

Prestige TV

The one advantage HBO Max consistently held over Netflix was its library. HBO effectively ushered in the Golden Age of television with landmark series like The Sopranos and The Wire, then kept delivering hit after hit. Sex and the City. Game of Thrones. More recently, the horror hit Welcome to Derry. Time and again, HBO lived up to its tagline: it’s not TV, it’s HBO.

Exclusive access to that catalogue is invaluable. One of the biggest obstacles facing any streaming platform is retention. Without a deep, high-quality library, subscriptions inevitably drop. Acquiring what is arguably the strongest TV library ever assembled and integrating it into Netflix’s ecosystem would instantly raise the platform’s long-term value.

Friends

You can sneer all you want, but the numbers do not lie. Friends, a sitcom that ended over two decades ago, remains one of the most valuable intellectual properties in entertainment, generating approximately one billion dollars annually. When the show left Netflix for HBO Max in a lucrative licensing deal, Netflix lost a title that consistently ranked among its most watched.

Friends is comfort viewing at scale. Its audience returns again and again, and will continue to do so for decades. Few properties offer that level of lasting engagement.

DC Universe

All eyes were on Superman last summer as the fate of the DC Universe hung in the balance. Peter Safran and James Gunn delivered, turning the film into a major success and effectively securing a full-scale reboot of the DC Universe. With projects mapped out for the next decade, DC Studios is now running on momentum and is positioned to become a massive revenue engine.

For Netflix, acquiring DC means inheriting a franchise that has already stabilised and is primed for long term returns.

Harry Potter

Last, and most importantly, Harry Potter.

It is difficult to overstate the value of this property. The Harry Potter franchise is one of the most lucrative IPs in the world, and it is almost certainly the crown jewel behind Netflix’s bid. HBO Max has reportedly committed over four billion dollars to its upcoming series, expected to premiere in 2026.

From an executive standpoint, it is a dream scenario. A massive, built in global fanbase. Guaranteed commercial success. Controlled production costs through simultaneous season shoots. Long term actor contracts locking in stability. It is as close to bulletproof as entertainment gets.

Beyond streaming, Harry Potter opens doors to adjacent revenue streams. Gaming alone is a proven goldmine, with Hogwarts Legacy becoming a massive success. Add theme park potential through permanent set builds, tentatively dubbed Potterville, and the IP evolves into a multi industry ecosystem. Harry Potter alone justifies the valuation of HBO Max.

So who wins in the end? It is impossible to say.

What we do know is this. Netflix is not relinquishing its throne anytime soon. The king of streaming is here to stay.