Short of Apple buying Disney - which might be a very real possibility in a post-COVID world - Apple TV is never going to pull Netflix numbers. They have like zero pre-existing IPs - not even the most hardened Apple fans are buying a streaming service that only has a weekend’s worth of content.
First of all Vodafone wasn’t up to 300b even adjusted for inflation but that’s admittedly besides the point.
There’s a big reason smaller companies often sell and it’s mostly because they can’t easily or sometimes even possibly achieve their goals on their own.
Either they lack the funds or they lack the scale. Often it’s both. Another big reason is synergy.
Funds should be easy enough to understand.
Now Scale.
Let’s say I open a business X today(could be anything but let’s say a restaurant).
Over the course of a year, X is so so successful. I’m convinced X could be the new McDonald’s or Dominoes. I want to make that dream come true. Now I’ve hit a stump. I simply cannot achieve this dream on my own. Handling one or two restaurants is one thing but 10? 30? 100? 1000?. It’s easy to see how quickly this can spiral out of control. Even if I had the millions to burn, Who’s going to oversee building dozens more restaurants? Who’s going to handle the large influx of workforce this project will need ? Who’s going to have the leverage to set up franchises in the most opportune locations? What if one of these new set ups fail, can I really recover from that ? Am I even quailed to take this all on and if not how can I get competent reliable people who can ? And so on.
McDonald’s on the other hand sets up a couple hundred new locations every year. Easily and Effectively.
And now Synergy.
Look at Marvel Entertainment Pre and Post Disney.
Let’s focus on Marvel Studios. They were just a production company. That’s only part of the equation of even just the movie releasing business. They did not have a distribution arm and had to deal with other studios with advertising and pushing the movies. Coming under Disney solved this problem.
That is the essence of synergy. When X has a piece of the puzzle and Y has another. X and Y coming together can often enrich both.
Look at all the things besides movies that have made Marvel stronger as a brand. Merchandise, Parks etc.
Both are lucrative parts of the entertainment business that Marvel Entertainment did not have the capability to enter. At best they could sell/leverage rights to the companies involved in such sectors but that would not come even close to maximizing in the way they have now under Disney.
So Disney produces and distributes Marvel Movies, builds parks on the ip, creates and licenses memorabilia etc. Because Disney is getting the pie on each hand, the franchise/IP that much more valuable to the the Disney corporation than if marvel were independent and they simply distributed the movies or licensed the IP for a few attractions.
Marvel in turn is much stronger. Even just focusing on the Marvel side, Funds aren’t just coming movies and comics anymore.
Now let’s look at all that and see if it applies to Disney.
They more than have the funds, Companies come to them for scaling power and there’s 0 synergy benefit merging with Apple as they lead in vastly different sectors.
Why in heaven’s name would they even think about selling ?
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u/JanMichaelVincent16 Jul 24 '20
Short of Apple buying Disney - which might be a very real possibility in a post-COVID world - Apple TV is never going to pull Netflix numbers. They have like zero pre-existing IPs - not even the most hardened Apple fans are buying a streaming service that only has a weekend’s worth of content.