Billionaire Investor John Malone’s Streaming Wars Update: “There’s a Lot of Blood Flowing Down the Gutters”

During an Investor Day panel, the Warner Bros. Discovery board member also rejected a comment that studio CEO David Zaslav was overpaid.

John Malone, a major investor at Warner Bros. Discovery, says the streaming world is hobbled by too many competitors, and that online video giants will do better after inevitable industry consolidation.

“At the moment, there’s a lot of blood flowing down the gutters, of people who are streaming, and some can afford it and some cannot,” Malone said during a panel appearance at Liberty Media’s Investor Day. The billionaire investor expressed confidence in Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav for earlier seeing value in merging Scripps Networks Interactive with Discovery, and then creating a scripted and unscripted content giant with the spinoff by AT&T of Warner Bros. to merge with Discovery.