Two days after making headlines with the news that Liberty Global and Discovery, two companies in which John Malone has large shares, were taking stakes in Lionsgate, Malone appeared at Liberty Global’s investment day and explained some of his thinking.
The legendary media investor neither confirmed nor denied that Liberty Global might acquire Lionsgate, in which Liberty Global just acquired a 3.4% stake. “The store is always open … we don’t rule anything out,” Malone said, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Malone predicted that cable operators would soon add a fourth element to the bundle of voice, video and data: wireless.
“I believe the quad play is going to be enormously important so you can satisfy customers in their desire to have everything, everywhere in high-quality, including on mobile devices,” said Malone, reported Multichannel News. “The convergence of the service offering we’re seeing in Europe, in the Caribbean, we saw it in Japan. This is inevitably going to be part of the service bundle.”
Malone also lamented not acquiring subscription video on demand (SVOD) service Netflix when he had the opportunity, went on THR. Liberty Global passed, said CEO Greg Maffei, because Liberty Global owned premium channel Starz at the time. “Rather than throw Starz under the bus, we held off from buying Netflix,” Maffei said.
Today, Starz is worth $3.5 billion while Netflix is worth $47 billion. Even brilliant billionaire investors don’t aways make the right decision.
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