Paramount Global Stock Reports Possible Paramount+ bundle with Apple TV+

Shares of Paramount Global closed up nearly 10% on Friday, sending entertainment stocks higher Wall Street Journal reports that Paramount Global and Apple are discussing bundling their respective streaming platforms at a discount.

There is emerging consensus that there may be too many standalone services that the market cannot support. Bundling can lower costs for consumers, reduce service delivery and make other sense, industry executives and Wall Street agree and expect more of it. It’s a step away from the outright mergers and acquisitions that many are also predicting as media companies grapple with a flood of red ink and a decline in linear television.

The WJ According to the report, talks to merge Paramount+ and Apple TV+ are at an early stage.

Verizon bundles Max and Netflix, as well as Warner Bros. ‘s CEO David Zaslav Discovery to Paramount’s Bob Bakish has increasingly voiced his support for third-party packages. There is already an internal collaboration with Disney, which has been offering a Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu bundle for some time.

Paramount has signed a number of partnerships to drive streaming growth, including with Walmart+ and Delta in the US, and deals internationally with Sky in the UK, Italy and Germany, Canal+ in France, JCOM in Japan, CJ Media in Korea and most others recently in Greece with local cable provider Cosmote. During Paramount’s most recent conference call, Bakish called partnerships “a significant contributor to our momentum” and said that “this new phase of expansion has just begun.”

The company declined to comment on the report. Apple representatives were not immediately available.

Paramount shares rose 9.8% to close at $15.78. Apple was flat. The streaming service, part of the tech giant’s fast-growing services sector, still only represents a small part of its business. The Apple TV portal, which can charge high fees for each streaming subscription generated there, is a significantly larger and more profitable area than Apple TV+.

“Apple has enormous influence,” said media analyst Barton Crockett of Rosenblatt Securities. “Apple is a different bird, so we’ll see what they do.” [Paramount] can negotiate with Apple. Overall, it’s clear to me that streaming will have to move to these major technology platforms over time. And I thought break-ups, library sales, and sporting goods sales were the way that would happen. These partnerships, this kind of synthetic bundling, can certainly be a kind of partial step,” he said.

“But it’s also not clear to me that Paramount will be the only player in the market if Apple goes in that direction.”