Amazon has a lion's appetite for video

Audio 03:47

Amazon boss Jeff Bezos.

© Mark Ralston / AFP

By: Aabla Jounaïdi Follow

8 mins

This is the first purchase of a historic studio by an internet giant.

Amazon is going to eat MGM's legendary lion.

Announced Wednesday, the cost of the transaction would amount to nearly 8.45 billion dollars and would sign the acquisition of more than 4,000 legendary films, including

James Bond

,

Rocky

or even successful series like

The Handmail's tale

and

Fargo

.

A war chest to allow Amazon to gain length on Netflix, the benchmark in video streaming.

Publicity

The competition has accelerated the movement of mergers or acquisitions in the media and entertainment sector.

Two hundred and forty billion dollars is now the value of the reconciliations between groups in the sector that we are seeing this year.

A level never seen in two decades.

In addition to the takeover by Amazon, there was a few days earlier the merger of Warner Media, the subsidiary of the American telecoms giant AT&T, with Discovery, the world leader in thematic channels: a transaction at 43 billion dollars.

Earlier this month, Verizon got rid of two former internet pioneers, AOL and Yahoo.

MGM was looking for a buyer

We tend to justify a lot of things by the Covid.

This is still the case here.

It's true that the pandemic has driven audiences away from places like cinemas, weakening studios.

And on the contrary, it has strengthened digital groups like Amazon, which saw its revenues jump by $ 100 billion last year, thanks to the confinement.

This also left time for Amazon to polish its weapons and its strategy to embark on major takeovers intended to significantly expand its content.

The broadcasting rights of the American football championship, the rights of the Lord of the Rings and now a legendary catalog, that of a nearly century-old and multi-award-winning studio.

The stake: catching up with the Netflix monster

Amazon joins the cohort of online video giants.

Netflix, the leader with its 208 million subscribers, is followed by Disney which has half as many.

So far, Amazon has not shone with a bloated offer.

However, he understood that it had to be densified.

And Amazon has a strength that others don't: a lot of user data, likely to offer pay-per-view services, not just video.

To make you move faster and more often from a movie to the online goods purchasing platform.

After all, Amazon is mostly a retail giant and its primary goal is to "

sell

you 

more socks

" in the words of its boss Jeff Bezos.

How do the authorities see this latest big deal, especially the risks to competition?

Amazon has been in the sights of a Washington prosecutor for a few days over a possible impediment to competition in online commerce. The fact that the group controls 50% of the online market raises the question of whether the latest acquisition is likely to further strengthen this position. Through the increase in subscribers to its online video platform Prime Video, Amazon's position in the sector is questionable. It will be up to the Department of Justice to examine it. Until then, perhaps given the context, the gradual establishment of a new administration, the strengthening of the anti-trust arsenal in the United States will be put back on the political agenda. A Republican elected representative of the anti-trust commission is already said to be "

worried

" by the latest major maneuvers by the giant Amazon.

IN SHORT

After the right to be employed, Uber drivers allowed to unionize in the UK

This is another blow to the model introduced by Uber.

Two months after the historic agreement granting them minimum wage and paid holidays like any employee, the 70,000 Uber drivers in the United Kingdom will be able to be represented by a union, GMB.

The union and Uber "

 will join forces to improve flexible labor standards

 " promises the platform.

A first again, and a change of line that owes a lot to legal actions against Uber in recent months, including a resounding defeat in the Supreme Court last February.

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