Skydance has closed its purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery and says Paramount+ and HBO Max will be folded into one service. On Nielsen’s latest distributor ranking, the combined company would already sit second in U.S. television time, behind only YouTube. On streaming apps alone, the picture is smaller yet extremely significant. It now becomes apparent why so many in Hollywood wanted to stop this buyout. Not necessarily because of monopolistic concerns, but because David Willison’s new company is about to eclipse Disney and Netflix!
Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery are now one company. The $111 billion deal closed Tuesday, and the combined business will operate as Skydance Corp. under chairman and chief executive David Ellison. Variety reported that Skydance reiterated a plan already signaled by Paramount executives: its Paramount+ and HBO Max direct-to-consumer products “will be merged into a single service over time.” Timing, pricing, and the name of that app have not been set.
Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison being interviewed – YouTube, CNBC Television
The new company says it will have annual revenue of nearly $70 billion. It also inherits about $80 billion in net debt. The portfolio runs from Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. through HBO, Paramount+, Pluto TV, CBS, CNN, CBS Sports, TNT Sports, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, MTV, Food Network, BET, HGTV, and Comedy Central. Class B shares begin trading Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SKYD. Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders receive $31.01666668 a share in cash, and WBD has stopped trading on Nasdaq.
Ellison called the close “a historic day, not just for Skydance but for our entire industry,” and said the point of the combination was a stronger competitor “with the talent, resources, and reach to tell great stories in every genre, on every platform.” Ynon Kreiz, the former Mattel chief executive, has been hired as co-CEO. Voting control sits with the Ellison family and RedBird Capital Partners. The equity check that funded the deal, $47 billion of Class B stock priced at $12 a share, was led by Larry Ellison, RedBird, LionTree, and the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi. Although there is significant buy-in from Middle Eastern nations, they will have no control over the company as they are locked out of Class A stock.
Where the combined company sits in Nielsen’s Gauge
Nielsen’s Gauge family is the cleanest public measure of share of U.S. television time, not of subscribers. The July 2026 edition, released September 10, put streaming at a record 49.0 percent of total TV, broadcast at 19.5 percent, and cable at 18.7 percent. YouTube alone took 14.2 percent of all television time, a platform record, and led the Media Distributor Gauge by five share points.
Tom Cruise plays Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick from Paramount Pictures, Skydance and Jerry Bruckheimer Films.
On that distributor ranking, Paramount accounted for 6.5 percent of U.S. TV viewing in July and Warner Bros. Discovery for 5.3 percent. Added together, that is 11.8 percent. That arithmetic combination would place the enlarged company second among distributors Nielsen tracks, behind YouTube at 14.2 percent and ahead of NBCUniversal and Versant at a combined 9.2 percent, Disney at 8.9 percent, and Netflix and Fox at 7.8 percent each. Amazon was at 4.3 percent and The Roku Channel at 2.9 percent.
Those distributor shares are not a streaming-app ranking. They include CBS, CNN, TNT, and the rest of the linear networks as well as the apps. Nielsen also notes that the Gauge is not its currency rating for buying ads.
The streamer, measured on its own
The latest Gauge release that names both companies’ streaming portfolios is May 2026. In that month, Paramount Streaming (Paramount+ and Pluto TV together) was 2.3 percent of total TV time. Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming services were 1.5 percent. Added, that is about 3.8 percent of U.S. television time.
“Vaulting Ambition” — Episode 112 — Pictured: Michelle Yeoh as Philippa Georgiou of the CBS All Access series STAR TREK: DISCOVERY. Photo Cr: Ben Mark Holzberg/CBS é 2017 CBS Interactive. All Rights Reserved.
That would not make the merged app a challenger to YouTube or Netflix on viewing minutes. However, note that these services do not include any sports streaming service, such as what Disney offers with ESPN+. If Skydance can find a sports angle, such as CBS Sports, and turn that into a streaming service included in the package, it’s likely the service would eclipse Disney’s streaming market share and trail only YouTube and Netflix.
In the same May report, YouTube was at 13.8 percent of TV, Netflix at 8.0 percent as a distributor, Disney’s streaming services at 4.9 percent (if ESPN were removed from the services, Disney would likely be around 3.8 percent where we predict the new Skydance streaming platform will be), and Prime Video at a then-best 4.5 percent. July moved YouTube to 14.2 percent, Disney’s streaming properties to 4.7 percent, and Peacock to 2.6 percent, but did not reprint fresh Paramount or Warner streaming shares. A combined 3.8 percent would sit behind YouTube, Netflix, Disney’s streaming portfolio, and Prime Video, and ahead of Peacock and the May figure for The Roku Channel (3.1 percent).
Share of time can be added across apps because a minute watched on one service is not also a minute watched on the other. Subscriber overlap cannot. Morgan Stanley has estimated about 28 percent overlap between HBO Max and Paramount+ subscribers, and has described the pair as a path from the fourth- and fifth-place premium streamers toward Disney and Amazon, behind Netflix, with a forecast of more than 240 million subscribers by 2030. Paramount has previously said the combination gives it a little over 200 million direct-to-consumer subscribers. Churn after a forced migration would shrink both the subscriber count and the viewing share.
Dominic McLaughlin in his wizarding robes as Harry Potter – HBO
What “one service” still leaves open
Skydance is aiming for more than $6 billion in run-rate synergies over three years, mostly from technology, integration, procurement, marketing, and real estate, using what it calls the same playbook that beat targets after the earlier Skydance-Paramount merger. It also expects thousands of layoffs across the former Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery workforces. The company wants to cut its net-debt-to-adjusted-EBITDA ratio from an estimated 6 to 7 times in 2026 to 3.0 times by the end of 2029.
The close ends a bid Ellison’s Paramount Skydance launched a little more than a year ago, after his Skydance Media bought Paramount Global in 2025. A rival Netflix agreement for Warner assets and an antitrust suit by 12 Democratic attorneys general did not stop the deal. Consumers will not see a single app on day one. What Nielsen’s July snapshot does show is that the company behind that app already commands more U.S. television time than any distributor except YouTube, even if the streamer itself, on the latest service-level Gauge figures, would still need a sports component to topple Disney there.
