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Sun Valley’s Big Question: What Does Hollywood Need to Buy Next?

As traditional media consolidation loses some of its inevitability, industry insiders are looking toward gaming, tech and new forms of audience engagement as the next frontier.

It’s unnerving to think how hundreds of thousands of jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars are at the whims of chance meetings and golf course conversations. But that’s billionaire summer camp for you. Entire industries change the moment the right person has a lightbulb flicker of an idea. And if that flicker is validated by any semblance of an uptick in share price? Watch out. 

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This is the buzzy outcome of the annual Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, the unofficial breeding ground of Hollywood dealmaking. Every travel log, handshake and non-invite is scrutinized by the media with the frenzied intensity of Homeland’s Carrie Mathison. How could they not be? AOL-Time Warner, Google-YouTube, Comcast-NBCUniversal, Warner Bros. Discovery-Paramount Skydance; practically every consequential media merger and acquisition of the last quarter century owes its roots to this annual luxury getaway. 

For years, expectations have held that Hollywood would contract to just three to five major entertainment players. But following Wall Street-driven streaming disruption, colossal debt financing, increased regulatory skepticism, and rapid audience movement, a more calculated equation has emerged. The industry’s power brokers are no longer asking whether consolidation is necessary, but what kind of assets are actually meaningful contributors.

Consolidation is no longer a given

Historically, deals at the highest levels don’t have the rosiest ROIs. It’s hard to integrate different businesses, no matter how much overlap there is. It’s hard to manage a Jenga tower of a balance sheet laden with crushing debt. So is major consolidation an absolute certainty moving forward? 

“No, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen,” media analyst Entertainment Strategy Guy, who has previously worked at studio conglomerates, a major streamer, and independent production........

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