Brian Roberts Needs a Plan B, Hollywood Gets Duped, and Trump's Russia Guru Tells All!

Welcome back to The Daily Courant, highlighting the best new journalism being produced across Puck.

Today, Dylan Byers is back with a deeply-sourced look at how Comcast chief Brian Roberts allowed NBCUniversal to become a permanent second-stringer in the streaming wars. With another Olympic headache on the horizon, does Roberts have any M&A moves left at his disposal? Or will Peacock becomes shark bait for David Zaslav and Disney?

Then, below the fold, Julia Ioffe talks to former Trump adviser Fiona Hill about her former boss’s Putin complex. And don’t miss Matt Belloni’s hard-hitting take on how Beijing ate Hollywood’s lunch.

What's Brian Roberts Gonna Buy Now?

After missing out on 21st Century Fox and the Zaz-Warner merger, Comcast seemed like a natural acquirer for Activision. But $69 billion of Microsoft’s money later, is there a plan B?

Back in early December, when I first wrote about the possibility that Bobby Kotick might sell Activision, a few media executives responded by putting a bug in my ear: Would Comcast chief Brian Roberts make a bid for Kotick's gaming empire? NBCUniversal, after all, was badly in need of scale, more attractive intellectual property, and a more aggressive long-term strategy. And Activision, which was trading at a massive discount, would have offered it immediate entry into the lucrative world of gaming and a massive infusion of new I.P. Meanwhile, Roberts had twice missed out on major acquisitions that would have supercharged his media business: he failed to intercept Bob Iger's play for Fox in 2019 (though he succeeded in driving up the price, and pissing off Iger in the process), and he was seemingly caught off guard when John Stankey and David Zaslav negotiated their WarnerMedia-Discovery tie-up last year. To add insult to injury, the big deal he had landed—a $39 billion takeover of the British broadcaster Sky—appeared to have been a mistake, as the fast-declining asset is now worth a fraction of what it was when Comcast bought it.

But Roberts never spoke to Kotick about an acquisition, sources close to both men told me this week. And in retrospect, I suppose that makes sense. For a $2.3 trillion tech giant with a sophisticated gaming business, like Microsoft, an $80 billion acquisition of Activision is a smart play. (Microsoft is doing the deal in cash.) For a $230 billion telecom firm with a legacy media portfolio, like Comcast, that’s far more risky. Nevertheless, when news hit that Satya Nadella and Phil Spencer had realized their long-held dream of acquiring Activision—more on the behind-the-scenes negotiations here—I couldn't help but wonder... What the hell is Brian Roberts going to do now?

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