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Entertainment Intellectual Property
Key Takeaways
- Five streaming companies and large studios that are actively acquiring intellectual property rights include NBCUniversal, WarnerMedia, MGM, Viacom CBS, and Discovery.
- In general, streaming services and large studios acquire intellectual property rights through company acquisitions in order to obtain rights to intellectual property portfolios such as Dreamworks Animation (acquired by NBCUniveral) or EPIX (acquired by MGM).
- While, most company's do not disclose the exact amount spent on intellectual property rights, in general, these companies spend anywhere from $100 million to $4.5 billion USD annually.
Intro
Five streaming companies and large studios that are actively acquiring intellectual property rights include NBCUniversal, WarnerMedia, MGM, Viacom CBS, and Discovery. Details of each company have been provided below.
NBCUniversal
- Intellectual Property Acquisitions:
- Dreamworks Animation: 2016; $3.8 billion
- Olympic Games: 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020; $7.63 billion
- NFL Package Rights: 2012, 2015, 2018, 2021
- Legendary Entertainment: 2013
- World Wrestling Entertainment Inc: 2014
- Estimated Intellectual Property Rights Spend:
WarnerMedia
- Intellectual Property Acquisitions:
- You.i TV: 2020
- TWC/The Widget Company: 2020
- Intellectual Property Rights spending is not disclosed by the company through any press releases or financial reporting documents.
MGM
- Intellectual Property Acquisitions:
- Evolution Media: 2017
- EPIX: 2017
- Intellectual Property Rights spending is not disclosed by the company through any press releases or financial reporting documents.
ViacomCBS
- Intellectual Property Acquisitions:
- Chilevisión: 2021
- Miramax: 2020
- Pluto Inc: 2019
- WhoSay Inc: 2018
- Pop Culture Media: 2018
- VidCon LLC: 2018
- Intellectual Property Rights Spend:
- In 2020, the company invested $147 million USD in acquisitions, primarily focused on intellectual property profile acquisitions.
Discovery
- Intellectual Property Acquisitions:
- Channel 4: 2021
- TELE 5: 2020
- OPRAH: 2020
- Scripps Networks Interactive, Inc: 2018
- Intellectual Property Rights Spend:
- In 2020, the company spent $2 million related to the Scripps acquisition, $807 million on content licensing contracts and sports sublicensing deals, and $99 million on brand licensing. According to the 2020 annual report, each expense is related to intellectual property.
Research Strategy
For this research on entertainment intellectual property, we leveraged the most reputable sources of information that were available in the public domain, including Bloomberg News, CNBC, Forbes, Annual Reports, and others.