Regulators will see our deal for Warner Bros. as pro consumer, says Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters

? (Anchor) 00:00.510

and you guys will will join in this as well but certainly very happy to have greg peters the co CEO of netflix join us now in a morning in which of course their deal to acquire warner brothers discovery has been reaffirmed essentially by the warner board you heard from sam di

? (Anchor) 00:14.630

piazza or just a little while ago right here greg great to have you with us this morning thank you

Greg Peters (Co-CEO) 00:20.910

good to be here i'd

? (Anchor) 00:22.150

love to start with antitrust because it has been one of the key risks seen for both your deal and potentially as well for the paramount deal in its communications this morning the the the the warner brothers board says despite media statements to the contrary they don't think

? (Anchor) 00:39.750

there's a material difference in regulatory risk between the two deals how do you see it for netflix as the path to getting approval here given so many people seem to have objections to putting together the number one and number three streamer in both netflix and HBO

Greg Peters (Co-CEO) 00:57.900

yeah we believe the regulatory process will ultimately conclude based on the facts and we feel those facts really support the approval of the deal we're confident regulators will ultimately see this as pro consumer pro creator pro worker pro growth pro innovation and pro

Greg Peters (Co-CEO) 01:12.100

competition you you know came up with a few examples of how you might define the market we look at you know the market definition in a couple different ways a key one for our side is just you know who's winning TV view share and i think if you look at that we're way low in the

Greg Peters (Co-CEO) 01:26.600

rankings we're six behind google on youtube buying disney buying comcast NBC fox paramount even when we put you know HBO max and HBO on top of the netflix viewing that still puts us behind youtube and disney so we believe there's a really good story as to why this is a deal

Greg Peters (Co-CEO) 01:43.990

that's good for consumers at the end of the day by dozen creators anyway and we're already engaged with competition authorities including DOJ and EU commission to to explain that to them

? (Anchor) 01:55.270

so you've already begun that engagement can you describe it all what you're seeing there and or what is giving you perhaps confidence that you can in fact meet any objections they may have

Greg Peters (Co-CEO) 02:05.190

well i think it's just you know helping them you know with the facts essentially around what's happening and i think you know there's we mentioned the view share on TV another way to look at this is i've heard people talk about combining the number of subscribers i think it's

Greg Peters (Co-CEO) 02:18.190

important to understand that you know the the two services are highly complementary more than seventy five percent of HBO max members also subscribe to netflix so this creates actually an opportunity to offer consumers a more tailored better optimized subscription plan more

Greg Peters (Co-CEO) 02:33.110

value we also think you know when you think about the number of buyers that are out there on the creator side we've got new buyers coming in like amazon when apple we've got the fast services you know like two B so there's just there's a tremendous number of ways to get your

Greg Peters (Co-CEO) 02:47.510

project made and get it out to an audience

? (Anchor) 02:50.310

yeah and to those who would say well really they're just buying HBO obviously as part of this overall deal but HBO in particular to kill it you talk about the overlap to you know to put a key competitor out of business how do you or to really put it pull it aside and sort of

? (Anchor) 03:05.750

undermine it how do you respond to that criticism

Greg Peters (Co-CEO) 03:08.830

well i think that would be a very bad idea because i mean there's a we think there's a tremendous value in HBO and it's an amazing brand it says prestige TV we're excited to double down on that promise i think actually the HBO brand and service gives us another tool for how we

Greg Peters (Co-CEO) 03:22.790

think about assembling our plans how do we deliver different offerings to our members we've just gone through a similar exercise with our ad plans where we had to think about how do you compose the right set of offerings to satisfy different consumers while maximizing the value

Greg Peters (Co-CEO) 03:36.310

for the business that sort of key thesis with regard to the HBO brand and service is a key part of value for us so we we want to see HBO thrive rather than the opposite

? (Anchor) 03:49.350

to come back to antitrust for a moment the president 's going to play an important role here is there any indication you've gotten from the administration in terms of how they're going to view this transaction

Greg Peters (Co-CEO) 04:02.990

i think just stepping back the president and this administration they care about american industry they care about the success of american companies i think we have a great story that we've created over a hundred forty thousand jobs in just the last four years in the united

Greg Peters (Co-CEO) 04:13.990

states we think about production post production construction we support small businesses and local communities so i really think this deal is a win for the entire industry it brings an important iconic studio into sustainable model that means more investment that means more

Greg Peters (Co-CEO) 04:29.790

opportunities more american jobs more union jobs or production staying in the united states

? (Anchor) 04:35.510

EU is going to play an important role you raised it as well what are your expectations there we oftentimes can just get you know overly focused on the US regulatory process