M&A, earnings, financing, sports rights and the commercial structure of media.
The FCC voted 2-1 to replace the rule barring one broadcaster from reaching more than 39% of U.S. TV households with deal-by-deal public-interest review. The change creates consolidation headroom and retransmission leverage, but legal durability is uncertain after Newsmax said it would sue and Axios cited experts giving the agency better than even odds of losing.
$13.60 a share in cash, a 30% premium, closing early 2027; the combined company books more than $4bn of pro forma revenue. Elliott- and Brookfield-owned Nielsen is bolting brand-safety signals onto its audience currency as platforms build their own measurement; IAS becomes the last standalone pure-play.
ATG operates 70+ venues across four countries and reaches more than 18m people annually; the deal gives Mari control of physical inventory, ticketing and fan data as live experiences become scarce media infrastructure.
Revenue softened again, but the Connectivity sale gives Ziff Davis roughly $1.6bn of M&A firepower, about a third of its current market cap. The strategic read is portfolio timing: when People Inc., Dotdash Meredith and Future are shopping or reshuffling assets, Ziff Davis has cash to buy verticals rather than defend traffic alone.
Disney will reportedly sell its 50% stake in cash, giving Hearst full ownership of History, Lifetime and a portfolio reaching 414 million households across 200 territories.
Chris Berend becomes the portfolio's first chief content and experience officer as two group GMs depart and Good Housekeeping cuts editorial roles. Paired with the A+E buyout, the moves suggest a wider experience-and-events agenda, though Hearst has not disclosed the structure or revenue target.
Q2 revenue rose 11.2% to $762 million; digital-only subscription revenue grew 16.4% to $408 million on 12.8 million digital subscribers, while digital advertising increased 20.7% to $114 million. The strategy is destination-led: thousands of original videos, a new Shows tab, World Cup scale at The Athletic and direct apps designed to reduce platform dependence, with video monetization deliberately sequenced after audience habit.
Q4 revenue rose 11% to $2.34 billion and EBITDA 31% to $423 million. Dow Jones revenue increased 7% to $644 million, advertising rose 5% and digital-only news subscriptions grew 9% to 6.26 million; the CSO read is reinforcing rather than reinventing the model: compound consumer subscriptions, professional information and premium digital advertising while digital reaches 84% of revenue.
Fiscal Q4 revenue rose 28% to $4.21 billion as advertising jumped 78%, helped by the World Cup and Tubi; full-year revenue increased 5% to $17.13 billion. FOX One and the announced Roku acquisition point to a connected-TV system spanning free streaming, premium live sports and news, operating-system distribution and identity.
300m Premium subscribers and 777m monthly actives, revenue up 14% to €4.8bn, a record 33.4% gross margin and €797m of free cash flow, with premium revenue up 15% while advertising grew 1%. Automated buying is now about 40% of ad revenue and advertiser count is up 60% to 33,000, yet pricing softness held revenue flat.
Q2 revenue fell 3.8% to $1.64 billion as linear distribution declined 6.3%; advertising was nearly flat at $423 million and platforms grew 9.3% excluding SportsEngine. Fandango's free streaming launch, Full Swing, Bundesliga rights and CNBC/MS NOW direct products show the strategy: turn declining channels into vertical ecosystems.
Q3 revenue was $126 million, down 11%, while adjusted EBITDA rose 23% to $18 million as cash costs fell 14%; digital was 57% of revenue, with 584,000 digital-only subscribers and digital advertising down 9% to $45 million. The higher EBITDA outlook shows restructuring leverage, but durable value depends on returning digital revenue to growth and scaling Lee's platform beyond its own 114 markets.
Semafor reports preliminary conversations about a listing or stake sale, with bankers valuing the business above $80bn on roughly $15bn of revenue and 300,000 terminals at $30,000-plus a year. Michael Bloomberg is 84, owns about 88%, and has said his foundation inherits the company and must sell it within five years. A minority IPO is the only structure that solves that while he can still choose the governance, and the competitive comparison it would sharpen is Bloomberg against Factiva and WSJ Pro, not Bloomberg.com against WSJ.com.
He exits entirely with a non-compete, six months after being named in DOJ Epstein documents and losing 20-plus artists including Chappell Roan. Against $215m of projected 2026 EBITDA, 15.8x is a full price, which says the buyer is underwriting the sports-rights and events machine, not the representation book.
The FT-backed title’s first acquisition brings 2,000 founder applicants a cycle and 330 VC firms, though Onstage’s fund stays independent. Its Summit serves scaleups; buying the formation stage means owning the relationship before the company is worth covering.
Alex Keeney launched Eventual with a twice-weekly video show, a paid Substack and an enterprise data suite already on the roadmap, with Polymarket as both launch sponsor and exclusive data partner. Combined Kalshi and Polymarket volume went from under $5bn a month to about $24bn in seven months.
The American Ninja Warrior host will anchor its April-announced syndicated show from September 14; clearance has since risen from 85% to 91%+ of the US, now covering all top 50 markets. FOS has secured the distribution; now it is adding mass-market talent to translate specialist reporting for local television.
Advertising grew 26%; Ads Agent users see 8% lower CPMs and 6% lower acquisition costs, while Prime’s first NBA season peaked at 6.5m US viewers for a playoff Game 7, above the comparable 2025 broadcast audience. Retail intent, premium video and attribution now sit in one system.
Daily users rose 3%; ad impressions increased 14% and price 12%, pushing revenue up 28% to $60.8bn. Threads crossed 500m monthly users as global ads rolled out, while AI ranking lifted Instagram time spent double digits: more inventory and more yield from almost the same audience.
Paid seats passed 30m after net adds more than doubled sequentially; weekly engagement now matches Outlook and Teams, while pricing is expanding from seats to seats-plus-consumption. For professional information businesses, AI monetizes when it is embedded in recurring workflow and grounded in the customer’s own context.
Revenue rose 61% to $805m, with ads up 64% and ARPU 36% against DAUs up 18%; all other revenue was just $43m. Search referrals turned choppy, making Reddit’s conversion of drive-by web traffic into logged-in app habit the number to watch.
The multiyear pact with 20th Television spans scripted and unscripted projects built from long-form reporting, New York magazine and podcasts across the portfolio.
Kalshi Pro is a professional desktop terminal - multi-window workspaces, TradingView charting, screeners across ~2,000 markets, order-book depth, integrated perpetuals — aimed at institutional traders. The playbook is Bloomberg's: the moat is not data but workflow integration, and terminals create switching costs no app can.
As Main Street Sports' FanDuel-branded RSNs collapse, the NBA is building a centralized, geofenced local streaming hub for 2027–28: 20+ franchises possible, YouTube in talks, ESPN "super interested," the league valuing the package at $1bn+ — while the NHL will centrally produce local telecasts for four displaced clubs (MLB already does it for 15). The shift: leagues absorbing production and distribution to become the operating platform for local sports media. The open question is economics — whether platform reach can replace fees like the Lakers' ~$200m a year.
The NYT-owned outlet upgraded its multi-year Fubo deal from supplying video to a dedicated CTV destination carrying six of its shows (NBA Daily, The Athletic Football Show, The Tennis Podcast among them) plus short-form analysis, with select content on Fubo's FAST channel. Monetization is sponsorship-led: home-screen takeovers, interactive ads and branded content via NYT's T Brand Studio.
Antenna estimates 2.8m June additions - including 400K on opening day — versus 1.1m during the January NFL playoffs; direct sales supplied 40%, YouTube Primetime Channels 15%, Amazon Channels 19%, and 93% of gross adds were new subscribers. The number that matters comes later: whether the cohort retains into the NFL season.
Cuts landed mostly at NFL Network - acquired this year in the deal that gave the league a 10% ESPN stake — with no total disclosed.
Operating income rose 30% with margin at 34%; Search grew 17%, YouTube advertising 13% to $11.1bn, and subscriptions/platforms/devices 15% to $12.9bn. Product: Ask YouTube — question a video, generate takeaways, jump to moments — reached 140m users in June and is expanding into YouTube search, while 1.7bn unique viewers watched World Cup content.
Two million net adds took Peacock to 48m subs; Media advertising grew 55% (24% ex-World Cup). Media EBITDA rose only 4% because NBA and World Cup rights costs ate most of the revenue growth — streaming scale is arriving, but sport is taking the margin. Companywide, reported revenue fell 1.2% to $29.9bn (pro forma +4.7%) with free cash flow up 2% to $4.6bn.
Operating income rose 11% to $4.2bn (margin eased 34.1%→33.4%); full-year guide is 13–14% growth at a 31.5% margin. The programming slate reads like an aggregator's: video podcasts, open-platform creators, lifestyle programming from Condé Nast, Hearst and People, TF1's linear channels integrated in France, an expanded NFL slate, MLB events.
Comcast-owned Sky acquires ITV’s free-to-air channels, ITVX and ITV News, while ITV Studios (Love Island, The Voice) lists separately as a standalone content business. The combination becomes the UK’s largest commercial broadcaster (~6.5% ad-market share); Sky pledged ITV News and Sky News keep “distinct editorial identities” to at least 2030 — a likely regulatory flashpoint on news plurality (CMA/Ofcom).
CEO Mark Lazarus buys the Tiger Woods–backed simulator company (from Bruin Capital) to push the CNBC/Golf Channel spinco beyond linear into recurring-revenue businesses, part of his stated goal to make platforms half of Versant’s income.
Xbox sheds roughly a fifth of its staff and spins off four game studios (parting with a fifth) amid margins its CEO called “not healthy,” as Microsoft redirects spend toward AI. Part of ~4,800 total company cuts.
The profitable media startup from Condé Nast veteran Pamela Drucker Mann (Atreides-led seed) will publish short fiction in its ad-supported Drafting newsletter (~50K monthly readers; Hermès, Moncler, eBay advertisers), using reader response to pick stories for TV, film, podcast and vertical-video development.
The Tubi Media Group division adds subscription tooling to its creator-services stack, giving creators one partner for ads and subscriptions. Supercast’s top 10 podcasters gross $26M+/year in subscription revenue.
. Sky ends joint ownership with Sheikh Mansour-controlled International Media Investments - under fire for its coverage of Sudan’s civil war - and converts to a multi-year brand-licensing deal.
, its best and most profitable year in 15 years (~$34.5M profit), with 71% from reader donations and ~25% from ads; it expects ~$100M next fiscal year.
Versant will co-develop originals with top showrunners and supply library content, betting on the fast-growing short-form vertical-video drama format.
The weather division separates from the Post, rebrands as “Capital Weather,” and will operate as an independent site and app.
Lupa takes New York Magazine (with The Cut, Vulture, Intelligencer, Grub Street), Vox.com, and the podcast network (Pivot, Criminal, Today Explained); Jim Bankoff stays as CEO. The Verge, Eater, and SB Nation are excluded and will spin out under new ownership.
Comcast-owned Sky is nearing a deal for ITV's broadcast and streaming assets (excluding ITV Studios), a combination that would create a dominant UK streaming/pay-TV player - pending CMA, Ofcom, and DCMS scrutiny.
Canadian billionaire's family holding company completed the purchase for a reported ~£300m, becoming the publisher's largest individual shareholder.
Activist investor pressure on hiring overruns cited as the original trigger; signals continued strategic vulnerability for mid-tier social platforms squeezed between Meta and TikTok.
CEO Jim Bankoff and LionTree are pursuing multiple parallel transactions that would separate Vox Media’s podcast network, New York magazine, and the digital brands bundle that includes The Verge, Eater, SB Nation, and Vox.com. Puck reports the podcast business generated about $60M in revenue and more than $20M in profit last year, versus more than $100M of revenue and roughly $6M of profit at New York. Versant remains in talks on the podcast unit; Karlie Kloss has been linked to The Cut; Jay Penske (20% owner) is a fallback for New York.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy cleared the deal, ending a near three-year regulatory process that consumed more than £31m in sale costs and saw RedBird abandon its bid in late 2025. CEO Mathias Döpfner pledged "significant investment" in editorial. Closing expected by June 30 pending Ireland and Austria clearances. Springer is funding the deal from the £11.3bn 2024 sale of its classifieds business.
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett hired three partners to expand its sports M&A practice: Michael Kuh and Eric Geffner joined as co-heads of the firm's sports group within its sports, media, and entertainment practice; Matthew Carpenter-Dennis, previously overseeing team ownership transactions at the NBA, joined as a third partner. The hires reflect intensifying competition among major law firms to capture a growing pipeline of sports franchise and media rights transactions.