Barry Diller has confirmed he is out of the running for Paramount Global.
His company, IAC, had been exploring a bid during the 45-day “go-shop” period provided for in the merger deal announced this month by Skydance Media and Paramount’s controlling shareholder, National Amusements. During an interview in Paris with CNBC before the opening of the Summer Olympics, Diller expressed misgivings about having to step away, but said it came down to financial prudence. (Watch the clip below.)
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“It’s hard to predict, but I think it is over,” he said. “It is unwise to get in an auction with someone who has a pretty much unlimited balance sheet.”
Of the $8 billion transaction, Diller estimated that Larry Ellison, the Oracle billionaire and father of Skydance CEO David Ellison, is contributing, “I think, $6.2” billion.
“They’ve stolen the company, essentially – ‘stolen’ is a harsh word,” Diller said. “But the method of how they got this cheap price, which is this wild valuation for a private production company, that averages their price wildly down. Structurally, to compete with that, you have to put cash in. So if you have to put cash in, unfortunately, the structural disadvantage they have becomes an advantage because he can simply say, ‘Another billion? Another two?’ And I did an auction for Paramount once. I don’t think I would do it again.”
In one of the defining battles of the modern media age, the mogul dueled with Sumner Redstone in 1994 for control of Paramount, with Redstone ultimately prevailing with a proposal worth nearly $10 billion.
Diller was asked if another bidder could step in with a better offer than Skydance’s. Edgar Bronfman Jr., Byron Allen and producer Steven Paul have reportedly considered offers with varying degrees of seriousness, though none has been heard from since the Skydance announcement.
“It probably takes $9 billion in capital. And even if you did that, there’s a really good chance that he’ll say, ‘I’ll pay the nickel more,’” Diller said of Ellison. “There’s no question Paramount has been mismanaged for many, many years, probably going back to Philippe Whatever … Mr. Dauman, or whatever his actual, real name was. If you go back and see how it was mismanaged and the company is still breathing, it’s a great opportunity.”
Diller also held forth on the NBA’s $77 billion in rights deals with Amazon, NBCUniversal and Disney, with Warner Bros. Discovery’s matching bid rejected by the league. WBD has pledged to take “appropriate action” in response, likely meaning a lawsuit or at least the threat of one.
WBD CEO David Zaslav (who began his career as a lawyer, it’s worth noting) “has got a very good chance to at least muck it up so that they settle,” Diller said. Asked if a settlement would involve a financial payment or the awarding of games, the exec predicted, “He gets games. … Money’s not going to do him any good. He needs games.”
Another major development Diller had thoughts on was the withdrawal of President Joe Biden from the presidential race and the entrance of Vice President Kamala Harris as the presumptive Democratic nominee. Diller was part of the effort to persuade Biden to drop out of the race after his poor debate performance and other disconcerting signs on the campaign trail. Noting that First Lady Jill Biden was at a gathering in Paris he also attended, Diller observed, “She probably hates me.”
While he supported the idea of an open convention and a contest among Democratic hopefuls, Diller expressed strong support for Harris. “Do not discount Kamala Harris,” he emphasized. “Within a millisecond of Biden telling her, ‘I’m not going,’ she mobilized her forces and within 12 hours, she shut everyone else down and completely, like a closed, locked door, it was her.”
Diller said some business leaders could be brought over to Harris. “They are a herd of pragmatists,” he said.
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