Newest Antitrust Concern: Hollywood

Another week, another antitrust concern. A few days ago, Amazon announced its $8.45 billion acquisition of MGM. Keep in mind, Amazon is already facing an antitrust lawsuit filed by DC Attorney General Karl Racine. The suit accuses “the company of stifling competition through Marketplace pricing requirements.”

Amazon already has a studio, and anyone with Prime knows that the company is pushing into entertainment with Prime Video. Keep in mind, MGM is home to a catalog of 4,000 films and 17,000 TV shows, including some of the biggest franchise names in Hollywood including all James Bond and Rocky movies. With these combined libraries, this acquisition raises red flags. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, this merger “would be the most aggressive foray yet by a tech giant into Hollywood.”

Fortunately, Senator Klobuchar responded to the news by calling on the DOJ to “conduct a thorough investigation to ensure that this deal won’t risk harming competition.” She went on to say, “This is also a reminder of why we need to fund our antitrust agencies so they can take on investigations of multi-billion dollar deals.”

We couldn’t agree more with Senator Klobuchar. We are hopeful the DOJ and FTC will look more closely at what we stand to lose if this acquisition goes through.