Antitrust Must Catch Up to How Americans Watch Video, ICLE Scholar Argues
WASHINGTON (Feb. 3, 2026) — As the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights prepares to examine Netflix’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) scholars caution lawmakers against relying on outdated views of competition in today’s media marketplace.
The Feb. 3 subcommittee hearing comes amid intensified scrutiny of media consolidation. But ICLE scholars argue that traditional antitrust tools—including the structural presumptions embedded in the federal government’s 2023 Merger Guidelines—fail to reflect how consumers actually engage with video content in a fragmented, fast-moving attention economy.
According to ICLE Director of Innovation Policy Kristian Stout, Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery compete not only with one another, but with a broad range of platforms vying for consumer time and attention, including YouTube, TikTok and video-game platforms. In that environment, market power cannot be inferred from legacy industry labels or narrow market definitions.
“Antitrust analysis should reflect how people actually watch video today, not how the industry looked decades ago,” Stout said. “Viewers divide their time across subscription services, ad-supported streaming and open platforms like YouTube, and they can switch with minimal friction. Against that backdrop, the Netflix–Warner transaction does not signal market power. It looks like a pro-consumer response to intense competition in a crowded market where attention—not subscriptions—is the binding constraint.”
For more on the topic, see ICLE’s issue brief on “Promoting Competition and Innovation in the Evolving Video Sector” and earlier blog posts from ICLE scholars on the Netflix-Warner Bros. Discovery merger.
To request an interview with Kristian, contact Jim Fellinger at [email protected].
About ICLE
The International Center for Law & Economics is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center working with a roster of more than one-hundred academic affiliates and research centers from around the globe. ICLE scholars promote the use of law and economics methodologies to inform public policy debates.