What Paramount-WBD means for Europe’s tangle of broadcast, pay TV and streaming inventory

The on-again, off-again deal for a merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) has been roiling the entertainment industry in recent months. Presently, the deal is on track to close in the third quarter of 2026, pending shareholder and regulatory approval around the world, including the U.S., the U.K. and Europe.

The $110 billion megamerger is massive in both scale and impact. Across Europe alone, the newly formed company would control Channel 5 in the U.K., TVN in Poland, Eurosport across the continent, Discovery’s lifestyle channels, MTV and Nickelodeon, TNT Sports in the U.K., CNN International, plus HBO Max, Paramount+, Discovery+ and Pluto TV.

It would span everything from free-to-air coverage to pay TV, premium streaming and FAST, all within a single firm. But those in the industry are now considering the merger’s impact on their quest to connect with consumers.

“One of the more interesting impacts of a combined Paramount–WBD could be how it simplifies the process of buying TV inventory across Europe,” explained Chris Cochrane, co-founder and chief strategy officer at Plug Media, a programmatic ad agency. As Cochrane pointed out, the current market is massively fragmented across broadcasters, streaming platforms and FAST services. “Buyers often have to piece together reach across multiple partners to build a coherent cross-screen strategy,” he said. Consolidating that under a new entity would make things far easier.

A win for advertisers?

The new entity could act as a counterweight to the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video by competing on the diversity of its options, rather than as a single monolithic streamer. Prime Video has scale and e-commerce data but a narrower format range; the merged entity would have less streaming reach but far more format diversity.

And while Netflix and Prime Video are striking deals with local broadcasters in markets like France , a combined Paramount-WBD would already control those assets natively — from TVN in Poland to Channel 5 in the U.K. to Eurosport across the continent. The merged company could offer advertisers integrated local-plus-streaming reach without third-party deals.

“Paramount already experiments with this through different buying models,” Cochrane said, explaining that it’s possible to buy inventory at a premium within a specific environment like Paramount+, or opt for a blended rate through broader network product. Paramount Connect, for example, spans Paramount+, My5 & Pluto. “It’s not hard to imagine a similar approach expanding across the wider portfolio if the deal completes,” he said.

That could be a boon for advertisers, according to Cochrane. “Rather than just adding more content, the real shift could be how that inventory is packaged, making it easier for buyers to access scale across broadcast and streaming without stitching together multiple deals across the market.”

But not everyone is as convinced of the value for ad buyers. “We’re not talking big punching power here,” said François Godard, an Italy-based telecoms analyst at Enders Analysis. Godard doesn’t believe the newly merged entity could call a large company like Procter & Gamble and convince them that the new offer would be one worth picking up. “Europe remains fragmented along national lines,” he said. “My interpretation is that you need a local operation, and they have not set up their local operation fully in Milan.”

What the company would offer is something that many streamers are moving toward — a range of options for advertisers that don’t just lock them into streaming but also offer traditional broadcast opportunities.

But that blessing may not be easy to tap into: There’s the issue of how you manage to package ad inventory for wildly different products. Godard said that the very virtue Cochrane identified for advertisers could also be a challenge. “How do you sell together inventory that is separately valued at very different prices?” he pondered.

But it’s far from a settled view. The clearest effect of a Warner Bros. Discovery-Paramount combination would mean more audience inventory controlled by fewer big streaming and linear TV players, said Ross Benes, senior analyst at EMarketer. Benes suggested that, for advertisers, this could simplify buying rather than fundamentally damage reach. “It’ll be a little easier for ad buyers, because they’ll have fewer places they have to go to get that inventory, because the audience is being centralized.”