Julius Young — Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Vantage
In 2024, the government blocked a $3.8 billion airline merger to protect consumers. The airline it protected filed for bankruptcy ten months later. The Paramount-WBD case is asking the same uncomfortable question.
In January 2024, a federal judge blocked JetBlue's $3.8 billion acquisition of Spirit Airlines. Ten months later, Spirit filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The DOJ's theory was that the merger would harm consumers by reducing competition. What actually happened was that Spirit exited the market anyway — not through acquisition, but through bankruptcy. The Big Four airlines — Delta, American, Southwest, and United — were its beneficiaries. Paramount's chief legal officer made exactly this argument to the DOJ: blocking a merger between two scaled content companies does not create competition — it may simply accelerate the decline of the weaker party, leaving the market more concentrated. Netflix, Amazon, Apple, and Disney would be the beneficiaries of a Paramount-WBD collapse in exactly the way Delta and United benefited from Spirit's bankruptcy. Related: If the Paramount-WBD Deal Collapses, HBO Goes Back on the Market