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Tag: Reed Hastings

  • One of Silicon Valley’s most prominent Democrats just called Trump’s $100k H1-B visa fee a ‘great solution’ | Fortune

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    As tech leaders across Silicon Valley blasted President Donald Trump’s new $100,000 H-1B visa fee as a threat to innovation, Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings broke ranks, calling it “a great solution.”

    In an X post on Sunday, Hastings said he has worked on H-1B politics for three decades and argued the steep cost would reserve visas for “very high-value jobs,” eliminating the lottery and giving employers more certainty.

    Hastings’ support is surprising for a few reasons. For one, as one of the biggest Democratic ‘megadonors‘ who is heavily involved with party politics, he rarely endorses any of Trump’s actions and in fact has said the President “would destroy much of what is  great about America.”

    Secondly, Hastings’ support cuts against the dominant mood in the tech industry, where most companies are alarmed about higher costs and the chilling effect on talent pipelines. Elon Musk, the on-again, off-again ally of the Trump White House, has fiercely criticized the potential changes to the program. 

    Many local tech leaders have said that the six-figure fee could deal a serious blow to innovation and competitiveness in Silicon Valley. Venture capitalist Deedy Das, a former H-1B holder and partner at Menlo Ventures, warned that the policy undercuts America’s biggest advantage: Its ability to attract global talent. 

    “If you stifle even that, it just makes it that much harder to compete on a global level,” he told CBS News. 

    Smaller startups, Das added, could see their financial “runway” shortened by months if forced to absorb the new cost, while some founders say they’ll simply stop sponsoring foreign hires altogether. 

    What the H-1B is—and what it has become

    The H-1B program was created in 1990 to allow U.S. companies to hire foreign workers in “specialty occupations” that require highly technical or professional expertise. Theoretically, it’s meant to bring rare talent – think engineers, doctors, computer scientists and specialized researchers. Each year, Congress caps the number of new visas at 85,000, a number far below demand.

    In practice, the program has evolved into something messier. Roughly 70% of visas go to Indian nationals, many not head-hunted by Silicon Valley firms but by outsourcing giants like Infosys, Wipro, and Tata Consultancy Services, many of whom work for some part of the IT sector. Those companies contract out employees to U.S. clients, leading critics—including President Donald Trump—to accuse them of undercutting American workers with lower-wage labor. 

    Defenders argue the U.S. economy desperately needs these skills and that the visa holders often fill jobs that would otherwise go vacant. 

    Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and a one-time staunch supporter of Trump, famously had a Christmas-time bout with the MAGA base over his support for H-1B visas.

    “There is a dire shortage of extremely talented and motivated engineers in America,” Musk posted on X. “If you force the world’s best talent to play for the other side, America will LOSE.”

    He has said that he, like “many Americans,” is himself here due to the visa. 

    Confusion, then clarification

    Against that backdrop, Trump’s Friday proclamation requiring a $100,000 payment for each new petition sent shockwaves through the tech sector.

    Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick initially said the fee might be annual, fueling panic among employers. By Saturday, the White House clarified: it’s only a one-time payment applied to new petitions in future lotteries, not renewals or re-entries by existing visa holders. 

    “This is NOT an annual fee,” spokesperson Karoline Leavitt wrote on X.

    The clarification calmed some immediate fears, but not the broader unease. Many employers rushed to get their H-1b holders tickets to fly into the U.S. before the fee was enacted. Indian biotech professional Shubra Singh told CNBC that her Saturday dinner in Pittsburgh with H-1B friends was derailed by anxious news alerts that left many rushing to change travel plans.

    Economic whiplash in India

    The financial reverberations were immediate. Shares of major Indian IT outsourcing firms—including Infosys, Wipro, Tech Mahindra, HCL Technologies, and Tata Consultancy Services—fell between 1.7% and 4.2% on Indian stock exchanges during Monday trading.

    Citi Research said in a note that the fee could shave about 100 basis points from margins and cut earnings per share across the IT sector by roughly 6% if companies continue staffing through H-1Bs. Analysts, including JP Morgan’s Toshi Jain, also predict fewer Indian students may choose U.S. universities if the post-graduation visa route now carries a six-figure price tag.

    Yet some see opportunity. Accel partner Prashanth Prakash said the disruption could redirect top graduates toward India’s startup ecosystem.

    “If Indian talent no longer heads to the U.S., it could be a boon for local entrepreneurship,” he argued.

    SquadStack CEO Apurv Agrawal told the Economic Times of India the H-1B fee turmoil is pushing Indian professionals to see India itself—not the U.S.—as the ultimate destination for world-class talent.

    “With the kind of AI-first companies and global-scale opportunities being built here today, we have a once-in-a-generation chance to retain and welcome back world-class talent,” Agrawal said.

    Fortune Global Forum returns Oct. 26–27, 2025 in Riyadh. CEOs and global leaders will gather for a dynamic, invitation-only event shaping the future of business. Apply for an invitation.

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    Eva Roytburg

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  • How Jessica Lessin’s The Information Has Survived a Decade of Media Tumult

    How Jessica Lessin’s The Information Has Survived a Decade of Media Tumult

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    The OpenAI saga was, in many ways, a perfect story for The Information. Reporters at the influential tech site spent the week of Thanksgiving obsessively chronicling the chaos inside the company behind ChatGPT, after its board of directors abruptly ousted its CEO Sam Altman. Five days later, Altman, the generative AI poster boy, was reinstated. By then, The Information had published 17 exclusive news articles on the company that had been picked up hundreds of times by other news outlets. “His firing was announced, and then everyone on my team was sending me all these tweets, where people were saying, ‘Oh, if The Information gets the scoop on this, I’ll subscribe,’ or ‘I really hope my Information subscription’s worth the money,’” editor in chief Jessica Lessin recalls. “And so it really felt like game on.” Lessin—who has followed Altman from the start, writing the first extensive profile on him back in 2005—supported her team throughout the week by, among other things, “reporting in bathrooms while serving my friendsgiving” and at the ENT doctor with her four-year-old.

    The small-but-mighty Silicon Valley publication, which turns 10 this week, has spent the past decade rolling out ad-free scoops and analysis to a targeted audience willing to cough up $399 a year for total access. Back in 2013, when Lessin left The Wall Street Journal to start her company, it was generally accepted that “legacy media was where serious journalism was. And then there were a couple of upstarts trying to do new things, but trying to fuel it with venture capital and ad dollars,” she says, adding, “Those businesses have evaporated.” But The Information, fueled by subscriptions, has survived and seemingly paved the way for a new cohort of outlets offering niche industry reporting at a premium price, from Puck to Punchbowl News. Today, more outlets, like Axios and Politico, are also offering B2B subscription products along with their free content.

    “There were a number of media start-ups around that moment, and she was very unconventional—that she was doing paid subscriptions and was not that interested in social,” says Ben Smith, a former editor in chief of BuzzFeed News, who last year founded Semafor, one of the start-ups in which Lessin has invested. “It kind of pains me to say it, but obviously, she’s been totally vindicated, and most of her competitors are no longer around.” Those former competitors include BuzzFeed News, the Pulitzer Prize–winning online news site that shut down in April. There was also Recode, a brand Vox retired in March; Quartz, which is still around but has changed hands multiple times over the years, most recently to G/O Media; and Vice, which, the Times, while reporting that the company had filed for bankruptcy in May, referred to as a “decayed digital colossus.” Lessin was ahead of her time with the business model she adopted and the story she wanted to own. “She’d come out of The Wall Street Journal, and there was a sense that The Information was applying the kind of East Coast financial reporting rigor to an ecosystem that the East Coast publications didn’t really seem to understand very well,” says Smith. Longtime subscriber Roelof Botha, the head of Sequoia Capital and former CFO of PayPal, agrees, noting that when Lessin started The Information, “The conventional wisdom at the time was, Oh, you’re not going to build a successful subscription-only business at that price point. Who knows if the market is big enough for people who are deeply passionate about technology news of the sorts that they would cover?” He adds, “She was on the right side of history.”

    “There is no CEO of any company of significance that was not paying attention to OpenAI over the past week,” Lessin tells me. “I think that was a fundamental bet we took 10 years ago—that you cannot be ahead or even keep up in business without immersing yourself in what’s happening in these companies and technologies.”

    Today, per Lessin, The Information has 475,000 active readers (i.e., paid subscribers and unpaid newsletter subscribers). According to Lessin, they expect to be profitable this year. The company will grow its overall revenue by 30% year over year in 2023. They’ve been disciplined when it comes to growth, with only 65 full-time employees working across offices in San Francisco, New York, and Hong Kong, as well as remotely. Lessin is focused on growing The Information’s presence in Asia; they currently have three people assigned to the Hong Kong bureau and two hires in the works. Lessin, meanwhile, traveled with US commerce secretary Gina Raimondo to China in August—a trip she later recapped during a special event for subscribers.

    She’s also focused on building out The Information’s finance coverage, especially following their coverage of the Silicon Valley Bank crisis earlier this year. That was a “real eye-opener for me,” says Lessin, both in terms of how they were serving their audience—“a lot of subscribers said we saved them a lot of money,” she notes—and that they could compete on the finance beat, which she says has “led to a host of coverage around the banking sector overall.” Legacy media outlets like the Times, the Journal, and Bloomberg, says Lessin, are “going to be around forever,” but “they’re not as relevant” in “my world, and I think in business,” because of the size of the audience they aim to serve. “That model really limits how indispensable you can be, especially to a certain class of reader,” says Lessin.

    Among that targeted class is Jeff Bezos. “I read it all the time and have been a subscriber for years,” the Amazon founder told me in an email. “Jessica has done a terrific job. Always insightful on tech.” Another longtime subscriber is Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings. “Check it every day,” he tells me, noting that he’s “thrilled from a business-model standpoint that she’s succeeded”—he is, after all, “a subscriber guy”—but “as a reader, what I care about is the thoughtfulness. She curates amazing reporters, and the pieces, from my perspective, are written in-depth, as opposed to clickbaity. Probably subscription is the key to that because then they don’t get paid on clicks,” says Hastings. “People care enough about the stories to continue to renew.”

    Lessin maintains full ownership of the company and says she has no plans to sell. “I’m in this for the long term,” she says, a view that she says has been key to the site’s success. “You need the talent, you need the right business model, and kind of that alignment that we’re not going to go chase the latest fancy revenue thing,” she says. “Over the course of the 10 years, I’ve seen every legacy publication build a Snapchat team, and then a TikTok team, and then a video team. We built none of those teams and instead hired journalists or paid our journalists what they were worth. It’s a different formula, and it takes a lot of patience.”

    It’s worth noting that Lessin used her own money—“less than $1 million,” she previously said—to start The Information. Her father is a partner at the private equity giant TPG, and her husband, the tech entrepreneur Sam Lessin, won big on Facebook stock he received when Harvard pal Mark Zuckerberg bought his start-up in 2010. And there’s a perception that Lessin has worked to distance herself from—that she’s too close to the people she covers. Her personal relationship with Zuckerberg, for one, has come under scrutiny. “You learn to have dinner with people one night and then edit a tough but true piece about them the next day,” Lessin says, when I asked about the dynamic. “That’s what we do time and time again.”

    “Finding the truth and telling people why it matters is a fabulous business. It’s just really hard.” That’s why, she suggests, others haven’t been able to figure it out in the same way. “They don’t want to sit in a closet during Thanksgiving taking source calls,” she tells me.

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    Charlotte Klein

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  • What we learned at Davos: The economy is a mess, but there’s still hope | CNN Business

    What we learned at Davos: The economy is a mess, but there’s still hope | CNN Business

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    A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. You can listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking the same link.


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Friday marks the end of the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, an elite gathering of some of the wealthiest people and world leaders.

    The glitzy retreat into the Swiss Alps looks increasingly out of date as the biggest war in Europe since 1945 deepens splits in the world economy. But that doesn’t mean it’s not important.

    The meetings between CEOs, politicians, and global figures at Davos can help set the tone for the year ahead. Here are some of the key talking points from this week.

    It’s a mess: The big stories coming out of Davos this year are full of phrases like “fragmenting global economy,” “economic uncertainty” and “the year of inflation.”

    While many executives and economists are now striking a more optimistic tone, global leaders are still fretting about the economic outlook. That’s not surprising since they’re contending with worrisome uncertainties — Russia’s war in Ukraine is still raging, inflation and interest rates remain elevated, there are looming energy and food crises, supply chain kinks and the debt limit standoff in the United States, not to mention the threat of global recession.

    The meeting began with a new report by the WEF that dubbed this decade the “turbulent 20s” and the “age of the polycrisis.” Business executives, politicians and academics, the report said, are bracing for a gloomy world battered by intersecting crises, as rising volatility and depleted resilience boost the odds of painful simultaneous shocks.

    Gita Gopinath, the number two official at the International Monetary Fund, said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that the IMF is worried globalization is in retreat. “We’re very concerned about geoeconomic fragmentation,” she said. The issue had come up a lot in meetings with member countries at the conference, she added.

    CEOs and political officials are also worried about the United States hitting its borrowing cap on Thursday, forcing the Treasury Department to start taking “extraordinary measures” to keep the government open.

    If an agreement isn’t reached, markets could plunge (like they did the last time this happened in 2011) and the United States risks having its credit rating downgraded again. The situation is a “mess,” said Peter Orszag, CEO of financial advisory at Lazard.

    JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon told CNBC from Davos on Thursday that the reputation of the United States as creditworthy is “sacrosanct.” To even question it, he said, is the wrong thing to do. “That is just a part of the financial structure of the world. This is not something you should be playing games with at all.”

    But it may not be that bad: Many leaders’ economic forecasts actually struck a semi-positive tone, even as they factored in strong headwinds.

    So far, energy supplies have held up in Europe, and the US and China are engaging in diplomatic relations — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He met in Zurich on Wednesday.

    China’s removal of strict coronavirus restrictions late last year is also expected to unleash a wave of spending that may offset economic weakness in the United States and Europe.

    Climate change was a hot topic: The rich and powerful do love to flock to Davos in their carbon-emitting private jets to discuss climate change. But this year, severe warnings were issued to global leaders.

    The UN Secretary General accused fossil fuel producers and their financial backers of “racing to expand production, knowing full well that their business model is inconsistent with human survival.”

    Speaking at Davos on Wednesday, António Guterres said the commitment to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels is “going up in smoke.”

    “We are flirting with climate disaster. Every week brings a new climate horror story,” he said.

    Swedish activist Greta Thunberg also made her way to Switzerland and delivered a “cease and desist letter” to fossil fuel CEOs — signed by more than 800,000 people.

    The AI revolution is here: Some CEOs at Davos admitted that they’re using the revolutionary new AI bot, ChatGPT, to do their work for them, reports my colleague Julia Horowitz.

    Jeff Maggioncalda, the CEO of online learning provider Coursera, said that he uses the tool to bang out emails.

    “I use it as a writing assistant and as a thought partner,” Maggioncalda told CNN from Davos.

    Christian Lanng, CEO of digital supply chain platform Tradeshift, said he uses the ChatGPT to write emails and claims no one has noticed the difference. He even had it perform some accounting work, a service for which Tradeshift currently employs an expensive professional services firm.

    “I see these technologies acting as a copilot, helping people do more with less,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told an audience in Davos this week.

    There’s a saying on Wall Street that bad news for the economy is actually good news for the stock market and vice versa, reports my colleague Paul R. La Monica.

    That’s because investors often bet that dismal headlines will eventually prompt the Federal Reserve and other central banks to cut interest rates and provide more stimulus that can help boost corporate profits…and stock prices.

    But the debt ceiling debate in Washington is changing all of that.

    Wednesday’s big market sell-off and the continued slide Thursday might represent a turning point for market sentiment. Still, after a promising start to the year, stocks have seemingly taken a turn for the worse. Bad news actually might be bad news.

    “We’ve been snuggled up in expectations of a soft landing for the US economy,” said Kit Juckes, chief global foreign exchange strategist at Societe Generale, in a report Thursday. “Take away the blanket and it feels chilly.”

    Netflix announced Thursday that its founder Reed Hastings is stepping down as co-CEO at the company and will serve as executive chairman. Hastings will be replaced by co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, reports my colleague Clare Duffy.

    Under Hastings’ leadership, Netflix disrupted legacy movie rental companies like Blockbuster and helped shake up Hollywood by kicking off an arms race investing in original content.

    Last year, however, Netflix saw its stock and reputation take a hit after losing subscribers amid heightened competition from rival streaming services. In response, Netflix introduced a lower-priced, ad-supported tier for the first time in its history.

    Those changes may be paying off. In its earnings report on Thursday, the streamer said it added more than 7.6 million subscribers during the final three months of last year, well above the 4.5 million additions it had projected, for a total of more than 230 million paying subscribers worldwide.

    “Reed Hastings stepping down from his current role raises a lot of questions about Netflix’s future strategy,” Jamie Lumbley, analyst at investment firm Third Bridge, said in a statement. “While the subscriber growth numbers are encouraging, revenue growth is sluggish with the backdrop of a potential recession looming on everyone’s mind.”

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  • Netflix Is About to Make Subscription Sharing Much Harder

    Netflix Is About to Make Subscription Sharing Much Harder

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    Freeloaders beware — Netflix is about to clamp down on unauthorized password sharing.

    On the heels of its bombshell announcement that CEO and co-founder, Reed Hastings, will be stepping down, the streaming giant also revealed that it would crack down on people “borrowing” its service in the U.S. (i.e., people who mooch off of other people’s accounts to watch Netflix).

    “Today’s widespread account sharing (100M+ households) undermines our long-term ability to invest in and improve Netflix, as well as build our business,” the company said in a letter to shareholders.

    In other words, sharing is not caring.

    Indeed, Netflix blamed rampant account sharing as one reason for its massive subscriber loss last year.

    So starting between now and March, Netflix plans to limit accounts to users within one household instead of allowing sharing between multiple external users. Account holders who want to share with users they don’t live with will have to pay an extra fee.

    Related: Netflix Announces More Layoffs

    How will subscribers react?

    The company has tested this stricter policy with some success in Latin America. But based on that experience, they concede that the decision to limit subscriptions to households will cause some cancellations in the short term.

    “We expect some cancel reaction in each market when we roll out paid sharing,” the shareholder letter reads.

    In an earnings call earlier today, newly minted co-CEO Greg Peters, with Ted Sarandos, anticipated customer blowback.

    “This will not be a universally popular move,” he said.

    But ultimately, the company believes shows like Stranger Things and Megan will win people over.

    “It’s the must-see-ness of the content that will make the paid sharing initiative work,” Sarandos said.

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    Jonathan Small

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  • Reed Hastings Steps Down as Netflix Co-CEO

    Reed Hastings Steps Down as Netflix Co-CEO

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    Reed Hastings, the Netflix cofounder who led the company for more than two decades as it pivoted from a DVD-by-mail business into a streaming juggernaut, is stepping down from his role as co-CEO. He will become Netflix’s executive chairman, leaving day-to-day management of the company to two of his lieutenants, Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters. 

    Hastings said that the decision to step away from the CEO role was part of a yearslong succession plan, likening the move to those made by famous founders Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. In 2020, he promoted Sarandos—the company’s longtime content chief and architect of its push into original programming—to the role of co-CEO and product chief Peters to the role of chief operating officer and increasingly delegated the management of the company to them. “It was a baptism by fire, given COVID and recent challenges within our business,” Hastings said in a statement. “But they’ve both managed incredibly well, ensuring Netflix continues to improve and developing a clear path to reaccelerate our revenue and earnings growth. So the board and I believe it’s the right time to complete my succession.” Hastings added that he plans to spend more time on philanthropy, though he will “remain very focused on Netflix stock doing well.” 

    As part of the leadership reshuffle, global head of television Bela Bajaria will succeed Sarandos as chief content officer. Film head Scott Stuber will take on a new role as chairman of Netflix’s film business. In a statement, Sarandos thanks Hastings for his leadership, mentorship, and friendship. “We’ve all learned so much from his intellectual rigor, honesty and willingness to take big bets—and we look forward to working with him for many more years to come,” he said, adding that Bajaria and Stuber are “outstanding creative executives with proven track records at Netflix.” 

    Close Netflix watchers won’t exactly be surprised by the news that Hastings, 62, is passing the baton. Though he told investors in 2020 that he was “in for a decade,” the decision to name Sarandos as co-CEO and promote Peters to COO indicated that he was ready to take a step back from day-to-day management. That same year, he published a book of management advice based on his years running Netflix. It shed light on his unconventional leadership style and its role in birthing a corporate culture that allowed Netflix to adapt and grow during its first two decades. 

    But like many corporate leaders, Hastings has faced a roller coaster few years. Netflix saw an early boom in its business as people found themselves stuck at home with little to do, adding a record 36.6 million global subscribers in 2020. But it hit a rough patch in 2022 as it faced new competition in streaming and as COVID restrictions lifted, and it reported its first loss in subscribers since 2011. Netflix responded to the challenges by announcing plans to crack down on password sharing and launching an ad-supported streaming product, something that Hastings previously swore he would never do. Its business improved in the second half of 2022, and the company added 8.9 million members for the full year, its lowest rate of growth in more than a decade.

    Hastings has a reputation for being a touch eccentric. He likes to wear Netflix-branded merchandise during the company’s earnings calls and made headlines in 2017 when he declared that the company’s biggest competition was sleep. When Netflix passed 200 million subscribers, the billionaire—whom Forbes estimates is worth $3.3 billion—celebrated with a steak from Denny’s. He is a passionate supporter of charter schools and advocate for children’s education.

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    Natalie Jarvey

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  • Vince McMahon is back at WWE to ensure a smooth sale process. Here’s who might want to buy it

    Vince McMahon is back at WWE to ensure a smooth sale process. Here’s who might want to buy it

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    World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. Chairman Vince McMahon is introduced during the WWE Monday Night Raw show at the Thomas & Mack Center August 24, 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

    Ethan Miller | Getty Images

    Vince McMahon has returned to the World Wrestling Entertainment board of directors to facilitate potential sale talks ahead of the company’s media rights renewal.

    The notion of WWE selling isn’t new. CNBC reported it looked like a sale target in April and that it appeared only more attractive in July after a sexual misconduct scandal. The rationale is fairly straightforward: WWE is valuable intellectual property.

    Owning IP allows streaming services to exclusively offer content without the annoyance of winning licensing rights in an auction every few years. WWE also has value to offer in merchandising and theme park businesses.

    WWE has hired JPMorgan to help the company advise on a potential sale, according to people familiar with the matter. JPMorgan declined to comment. A WWE spokesman couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

    If a deal occurs, it would likely occur in the next three to six months, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. WWE plans to talk to potential buyers before it makes a decision on TV rights renewal agreements.

    Facilitating a sale

    McMahon’s return should help a sale process go smoothly, though there could still be hiccups.

    The former CEO and chair is 77 years old and the controlling shareholder of WWE. He stepped down after an investigation found that he had paid nearly $15 million to four women over 16 years to quell claims of alleged sexual misconduct and infidelity. Returning to the board will give potential buyers confidence he’s supportive of the details of any transaction.

    “My return will allow WWE, as well as any transaction counterparties, to engage in these processes knowing they will have the support of the controlling shareholder,” McMahon said in a statement Thursday.

    McMahon’s return doesn’t affect current leadership. McMahon’s daughter, Stephanie, and former CAA agent Nick Khan are co-CEOs. But it remains unclear what type of role, if any, McMahon would want at WWE if he sold the company. WWE has told investors that McMahon’s role at the company is essential in “our ability to create popular characters and creative storylines.” Currently, McMahon doesn’t have a formal say in the company’s creative direction.

    Mansoor (bottom) competes with Mustafa Ali during the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) Crown Jewel pay-per-view in the Saudi capital Riyadh on October 21, 2021.

    Fayez Nureldine | AFP | Getty Images

    Whether a buyer would be comfortable with McMahon taking a more hands-on role at the company is unknown. But WWE is McMahon’s life work. It’s possible a sale may only happen with at least some strings attached.

    WWE has a market capitalization of more than $6 billion after rising nearly 17% percent on Friday, buoyed by heightened sale speculation.

    There are three categories of likely buyers for WWE — the legacy media companies, the streamers and the entertainment holding companies. Here’s who might be interested.

    Comcast

    Comcast, which owns NBCUniversal, is a potential fit as a buyer for WWE. McMahon’s company already has an exclusive streaming deal with Comcast’s streaming service, Peacock, and a cable TV deal with NBCUniversal’s USA Network. Comcast has a market capitalization of more than $160 billion and can easily afford the company — especially with a $9 billion (or more) check coming as soon as January 2024 from Disney for a 33% stake in Hulu.

    Comcast can lock up WWE in perpetuity without having to pay upcoming rights renewal increases and can use the company’s IP for theme parks, movies and other spinoff series.

    Still, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said in October “the bar is the highest it’s been in terms of M&A” and has repeatedly said the company isn’t in a rush to pursue an acquisition.

    Fox

    Disney

    Returning CEO Bob Iger may want to make a splashy acquisition as he retakes the throne at Disney. WWE fits Disney in the same ways that it fits Comcast. It would bolster Disney’s streaming ambitions (perhaps ESPN+), it would support the linear network business, and it would add some heft to merchandizing and theme park businesses.

    Comcast didn’t want Disney walking away with Fox in 2019 and drove up the price by tens of billions by topping Iger’s initial bid. Could Iger see WWE as the next IP battle between Disney and his rival Comcast?

    Disney CEO, Bob Iger attends the European film premiere of ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ at Cineworld Leicester Square on 18 December, 2019 in London, England.

    Wiktor Szymanowicz | Future Publishing | Getty Images

    Warner Bros. Discovery

    Netflix

    Netflix has long shied away from sports and other live events, but it’s recently become open to the idea of owning a league outright or taking an ownership stake. Owning a sports league would give Netflix the ability to create video games and spinoff series without friction. Netflix found success in its Formula 1 “Drive to Survive” documentary series, giving co-CEO Reed Hastings faith that certain sports properties will resonate with Netflix’s huge global audience. But Netflix doesn’t own Formula 1, limiting its future options.

    Acquiring WWE or another sports league would be a path toward offering live entertainment without renting content — similar to Zaslav’s thinking.

    “We’ve not seen a profit path to renting big sports,” said co-CEO Ted Sarandos last month at the UBS Global TMT Conference. “We’re not anti-sports; we’re just pro-profit.”

    Amazon

    Endeavor Group Holdings

    Endeavor, run by superagent Ari Emanuel, could add WWE to its stable of assets after agreeing to buy 100% of UFC in 2021.

    Emanuel bought UFC to increase the scope of the talent agency’s business to live events. WME-IMG, now just a part of Endeavor, represents many UFC athletes — as well as WWE superstars. The UFC deal has been a success for Endeavor, which paid about seven times 2016’s $600 million revenue in 2016. UFC generated more than $1 billion in revenue in 2022.

    Ari Emanuel speaks onstage during the 2017 LACMA Art + Film Gala Honoring Mark Bradford and George Lucas presented by Gucci at LACMA on November 4, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. 

    Stefanie Keenan | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

    Endeavor’s enterprise value of just about $11 billion makes WWE a huge swing for the company. The company’s relatively small balance sheet would likely prevent Endeavor from winning a bidding war against media giants. But McMahon’s outsized personality may fit with the brash Emanuel and UFC President Dana White.

    Selling to a third party would also allow WWE to increase rights renewals every few years. That may or may not be a positive for the long-term future of the company as the media distribution ecosystem changes.

    Liberty Media

    While Endeavor owns UFC, Liberty’s Formula One Group owns Formula 1. John Malone, Liberty’s controlling shareholder, and CEO Greg Maffei, along with Formula 1 CEO Stefano Domenicali, have figured out how to globally market the car racing league, including cracking American culture after decades of obscurity.

    Malone and Maffei have extensive track records at maximizing media valuations and acquiring media assets for less than $10 billion, including Formula 1, Sirius XM and Pandora. The global success of Formula 1 could provide a roadmap for a future WWE strategy.

    Disclosure: Comcast owns NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC.

    WATCH: Jim Cramer gives his take on how Disney could perform this year

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  • ‘Wakanda Forever’ is No. 1 for 4th straight weekend

    ‘Wakanda Forever’ is No. 1 for 4th straight weekend

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    NEW YORK — “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” kept the box-office crown for the fourth straight weekend, and the comic holiday thriller “Violent Night” debuted with $13.3 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. But the biggest talking point on the weekend was a movie conspicuously absent from theaters.

    Had Netflix kept Rian Johnson’s whodunit sequel “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” in theaters, it would have been one of the weekend’s top draws. Last weekend, the streamer — in its first such pact with North America’s top chains — released “Glass Onion” in about 600 theaters. While significantly less than the 4,000-plus theaters most big movies open in, the Netflix film reportedly grossed about $15 million — an enviable total for a medium scaled release.

    Netflix declined to release ticket sales and pulled “Glass Onion” on Tuesday, preferring to keep its release limited to a one-week sneak-peak theatrical run before debuting on the streaming service Dec. 23. Netflix’s focus, its executives have said, is driving subscribers to its streaming service. On Wednesday, Reed Hastings, chief executive of Netflix, acknowledged the company left “lots” of money on the table in the move.

    So instead of feasting on “Glass Onion,” as ticket buyers did after Thanksgiving in 2019 when Lionsgate released “Knives Out,” moviegoers were fed mostly leftovers this weekend.

    For four weeks, the Walt Disney Co.’s “Wakanda Forever” has ruled the box office. Ryan Coogler’s Marvel movie has totaled $733 million globally, including $339 million in overseas sales.

    “Violent Night” was the only new wide release in cinemas. Starring David Harbour as a not-so-saintly Saint Nick, the Universal release got off to a good start. “Violent Night,” which earned a B+ CinemaScore from audiences, cost about $20 million to make.

    Though “Avatar: The Way of Water” and other holiday releases like “Puss in Boots 2,” “Babylon” and “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” loom in the coming weeks, theaters continue to see fewer films in wide release than they did pre-pandemic. David A. Gross, who publishes the box-office subscription newsletter FranchiseRe, says that while there were 58 franchise films released in 2019, there have been only 32 in 2022.

    There’s also been a dearth of family releases in theaters. After a muted debut last weekend, Disney’s big-budget animated fantasy adventure “Strange World” dipped to third place with a mere $4.9 million in its second week. Some of the season’s notable kid-friendly movies are streaming, instead.

    The Roald Dahl adaptation “Matilda the Musical,” starring Emma Thompson, was made jointly by Netflix, Sony Pictures and Working Title Films. Netflix has worldwide distribution rights to the film except for the United Kingdom and Ireland, where Sony put the film into theaters last weekend. For two weeks, “Matilda” has been the top film at the U.K. box office, grossing $9.7 million over that stretch. In the U.S., “Matilda” begins steaming on Christmas.

    Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

    1. “Wakanda Forever,” $17.6 million.

    2. “Violent Night,” $13.3 million.

    3. “Strange World,” $4.9 million.

    4. “The Menu,” $3.6 million.

    5. “Devotion,” $2.8 million.

    6. “I Heard the Bells,” $1.8 million.

    7. “Black Adam,” $1.7 million.

    8. “The Fabelmans,” $1.3 million.

    9. “Bones and All,” $1.2 million.

    10. “Ticket to Paradise,” $850,000.

    ———

    Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

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  • Netflix nights still come wrapped in red-and-white envelopes

    Netflix nights still come wrapped in red-and-white envelopes

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    SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (AP) — Netflix’s trailblazing DVD-by-mail rental service has been relegated as a relic in the age of video streaming, but there is still a steady — albeit shrinking — audience of diehards like Amanda Konkle who are happily paying to receive those discs in the iconic red-and-white envelopes.

    “When you open your mailbox, it’s still something you actually want instead of just bills,” said Konkle, a resident of Savannah, Georgia, who has been subscribing to Netflix’s DVD-by-mail service since 2005.

    It’s a small pleasure that Konkle and other still-dedicated DVD subscribers enjoy but it’s not clear for how much longer. Netflix declined to comment for this story but during a 2018 media event, co-founder and co-CEO of Netflix Reed Hastings suggested the DVD-by-mail service might close around 2023.

    When — not if — it happens, Netflix will shut down a service that has shipped more than 5 billion discs across the U.S. since its inception nearly a quarter century ago. And it will echo the downfall of the thousands of Blockbuster video rental stores that closed because they couldn’t counter the threat posed by Netflix’s DVD-by-mail alternative.

    The eventual demise of its DVD-by-mail service has been inevitable since Hastings decided to spin it off from a then-nascent video streaming service in 2011. Back then, Hastings floated the idea of renaming the service as Qwikster — a bungled idea that was so widely ridiculed that it was satirized on “Saturday Night Live.” It finally settled on its current, more prosaic handle, DVD.com. The operation is now based in non-descript office in Fremont, California, located about 20 miles from Netflix’s sleek campus in Los Gatos, California.

    Shortly before breakup from video streaming, the DVD-by-mail service boasted more than 16 million subscribers, a number that has now dwindled to an estimated 1.5 million subscribers, all in the U.S., based on calculations drawn from Netflix’s limited disclosures of the service in its quarterly reports. Netflix’s video streaming service now boasts 223 million worldwide subscribers, including 74 million in the U.S. and Canada.

    “The DVD-by-mail business has bequeathed the Netflix that everyone now knows and watches today,” Marc Randolph, Netflix’s original CEO, said during an interview at a coffee shop located across the street from the post office in Santa Cruz, California.

    The 110-year-old post office has become a landmark in Silicon Valley history because it’s where Randolph mailed a Patsy Cline CD to Hastings in 1997 to test whether a disc could be delivered through the U.S. Postal Service without being damaged.

    The disc arrived at Hastings’ home unblemished, prompting the duo in 1998 to launch a DVD-by-mail rental website that they always knew would be supplanted by even more convenient technology.

    “It was planned obsolescence, but our bet was that it would take longer for it to happen than most people thought at the time,” Randolph said.

    With Netflix’s successful streaming service, it might be easy to assume that anyone still paying to receive DVDs through the mail is a technophobe or someone living in a remote part of the U.S. without reliable internet access. But subscribers say they stick with the service so they can rent movies that are otherwise difficult to find on streaming services.

    For Michael Fusco, 35, that includes the 1986 film “Power” starring a then-youthful Richard Gere and Denzel Washington, and 1980′s “The Big Red One” starring Lee Marvin. That’s among the main reasons he has been subscribing to the DVD-by-service since 2006 when he was just a freshman in college, and he has no plans to cancel it now.

    “I have been getting it for almost half my life, and it has been a big part,” Fusco said. “When I was young, it helped me discover voices I probably wouldn’t have heard. I still have memories of getting movies and having them blow my mind.”

    Tabetha Neumann is among the subscribers who rediscovered the DVD service during the throes of the pandemic lockdowns in 2020 after running out of things to watch on her video streaming service. So she and her husband signed up again for the first time since canceling in 2011. Now they like it so much that they get the a plan that allows them to keep up to three discs at a time, an option that currently costs $20 per month (compared to $10 per month for the one-disc plan).

    “When we started going through all the movies we wanted to see, we realized it was cheaper than paying $5 per movie on some streaming services,” Neumann said. “Plus we have found a lot of old horror movies, and that genre is not really big on streaming.”

    Konkle, who has written a book about Marilyn Monroe’s films, says she still finds movies on the DVD service — such as the 1954 film “Cattle Queen of Montana,” featuring future U.S. President Ronald Reagan alongside Barbara Stanwyck and the 1983 French film “Sugar Cane Alley” — that help her teach her film studies classes as an associate professor at Georgia Southern University. It’s a viewing habit she doesn’t usually share with her classes because “most of my students don’t know what a DVD is,” said Konkle, 40, laughing.

    But for all the DVD service’s attractions, subscribers are starting to notice signs of deterioration as the business has shrunk from producing more than $1 billion in annual revenue a year ago to an amount likely to fall below $200 million in revenue this year.

    Katie Cardinale, a subscriber who lives in Hopedale, Massachusetts, says she now has to wait an additional two to four days for discs to arrive in the mail than she used to because they are shipped from a distribution center in New Jersey instead of Boston. (Netflix doesn’t disclose how many DVD distribution centers still operate, but there were once about 50 of them in the U.S.).

    Konkle says more discs now come with cracks or other defects in them and it takes “forever” to get them replaced. And almost all subscribers have noticed the selection of DVD titles has shrunk dramatically from the service’s peak years when Netflix boasted it had more than 100,000 different movies and TV shows on disc.

    Netflix no longer discloses the size of its DVD library, but the subscribers interviewed by the AP all reported the narrowing selection is making it more difficult to find famous films and popular TV series that once were routinely available on the service. Instead, Netflix now sorts requests for titles such as the first season of the award-winning “Ted Lasso” series — a release that can be purchased on DVD — into a “saved” queue, signaling it may decide to stock it in the future, depending on demand.

    Knowing the end is in sight, Randolph said he will lament the death of the DVD service he brought to life while taking comfort its legacy will survive.

    “Netflix’s DVD business was part-and-parcel of who Netflix was and still is,” he said. “It’s embedded in the company’s DNA.”

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  • Netflix CEO Reed Hastings Reacts to Bob Iger’s Disney Return, Says He Thought He’d Run For Office

    Netflix CEO Reed Hastings Reacts to Bob Iger’s Disney Return, Says He Thought He’d Run For Office

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Disney’s firing of Bob Chapek and rehiring Bob Iger as CEO shocked many, including co-CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings.


    L: Reed Hastings, Bloomberg R: Bob Iger, Samir Hussein || Getty Images

    Hastings, however, didn’t express concern over Iger as a competitor. In a tweet, he made it clear that he thought Iger was better suited for an even bigger job — president of the United States.

    “Ugh,” tweeted Hastings Monday, “I had been hoping Iger would run for President. He is amazing.”

    The dramatic executive reshuffling happened following Disney’s board learning that Chapek’s leadership was driving top-shelf employees away. Despite having said in the past that he wasn’t interested in coming back to the House of Mouse, the 71-year-old Iger evidently changed his mind.

    Hastings wasn’t being dramatic regarding the potential for a candidate Iger. As Business Insider reports, Iger first considered running, but his wife discouraged him. It came up again:

    He considered running for president for a second time after the 2016 elections, saying that America was “gravely in need of optimism” in the wake of the Trump presidency. Still, he was met with resistance by his family once again and decided against it.

    Business Insider notes that Iger would go on to say he was “‘really naive’ about his leadership abilities and chances of winning.”

    There might be another reason Hastings wishes Iger wasn’t back at the helm. Disney is officially one of Netflix‘s strongest rivals for streaming audiences. Hastings might consider starting a movement to draft his rival exec into the 2024 race if Iger further strengthens Disney’s hold on the market.

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    Steve Huff

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