Convince who? There is no such thing as antitrust anymore in the USA, it’s merely the size of the bribe required to let the merger go through now

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bluedevil2k 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

States have the ability to sue to block mergers as well as the federal government. See the recent 11 state lawsuit seeking to block the WarnerMount merger.

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xp84 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Just a couple of months ago, someone was still suing[1] to block Alaska Air/Hawaiian. This is a merger that already entirely went through. I would predict equal likelihood of some state lawsuit derailing a merger like this.

[1] https://viewfromthewing.com/passengers-demand-court-undo-ala...

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delecti an hour ago | parent [-]

There's a pretty clear difference between a lawsuit by 8 individuals, vs one filed by attorneys general representing a combined ~100m people.

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PunchyHamster 11 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sure they have ability, they are just not doing it often enough

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Forgeties79 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If it isn’t red states the current admin won’t care at all. If it’s mostly or entirely blue states, they’ll just default to siding with the merger out of spite.

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lotsofpulp an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Which is funny because regardless of whether or not those states succeed in blocking the merger, those legacy video entertainment businesses will become irrelevant whether they are one business or two, due to the fierce competition from TikTok/Instagram/Reddit/Youtube/Whatsapp/computers/anything on the internet in general.

It's probably the most inconsequential merger, from a consumer standpoint.

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pc86 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Do you have any evidence that you can just bribe your way past antitrust regulations (which are enforced by hundreds or maybe even thousands of attorneys across the political spectrum) or is this just how you feel because you don't like who is in the White House right now?

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xp84 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Quite true. Or honestly, it's really barely about direct financial bribery anymore[1] - all the recent ones have just hinged on incredibly naïve (and easily manipulable) readings of how a merger might affect culture war / red vs blue partisanship.

For instance, CNN really doesn't matter, and was a tiny part of WB/Discovery, but of course Trump cares deeply about (hating) CNN, so all that was needed to win over Trump and guarantee his approval was for the acquirer to whisper to him that they'd do a housecleaning there. This lifehack would work for acquiring any company that happens to control any media property that hasn't established itself as a Trump cheerleader.

Note: I'm not even a Democrat today, but the pure and petty corruption on display definitely sickens me.

[1] though, back when it was, the bribes were astoundingly high ROI due to how cheap they were!