How tampons in the mens room helped derail the Netflix-Warner Bros. deal

There were many defining moments featured in the months-long battle for the ownership of Warner Bros.Discovery: Sit-downs to woo President Trump, high-profile Congressional hearings, a brutal bidding war, and a tampon.Yes, a tampon.During the deal negotiations, while Netflix was wooing skeptical GOP lawmakers that it wasn’t a left-wing company looking to get more powerful by snapping up WBD, a delegation of lawmakers paid a visit to its  headquarters, and one was both shocked and disturbed to find a basket containing tampons in the men’s restroom.To be clear, there are other factors involved in CEO Ted Sarandos’s decision to cancel his nearly completed purchase of WBD’s studio and streaming service. But the “Tampon Incident,” as it has become known on Capitol Hill, does carry some weight in the unwavering political opposition from the GOP to Sarandos’ ambitions.“This is 2026, not 2020,” said one GOP staffer with first-hand knowledge of the matter.

“What were they thinking?”According to the spin coming from Netflix, Sarandos $73 billion purchase of vast chunks of the company known as WBD came to a grinding halt last Thursday because he didn’t want to get into a bidding war with Paramount Skydance, which had just sweetened a “hostile” offer for the company to $80.5 billion.David Ellison’s Paramount is a smallish media company with a big bank account.Ellison’s father is Larry Ellison, the Oracle co-founder worth nearly $200 billion His deep pockets backed his son’s ever more expensive offers for the entire company. Sarandos, meanwhile, runs a public company, with a market value that fell a whopping $200 billion during the costly takeover process that his existing shareholders obviously didn’t like.

As Sarandos put it: “This transaction was always a ‘nice to have’ at the right price, not a ‘must have’ at any price.”Maybe, but price wasn’t Sarandos’s only obstacle.During the 6-month bidding war, many Republica...