Warner Bros. Discovery is reportedly considering selling a stake in its video game business.
This is according to sources at the Financial Times, who claim that the media giant is looking to offload smaller assets in order to reverse the almost 70% decline in its share price since the merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery in 2022.
The company is reportedly considering selling the Polish broadcaster TVN or acquiring a stake in its video game division, which includes a dozen studios.
These include Avalanche Software (Hogwarts Legacy), Rocksteady (Suicide Squad), TT Games (Lego), NetherRealm (Mortal Kombat), Monolith Productions (Middle-earth: Shadow of War) and Warner Bros. Games Montréal (Gotham Knights).
Last month, Warner announced that it had acquired Player First Games, the studio behind free-to-play platform fighter MultiVersus, for an undisclosed sum.
JB Perrette, executive at Warner Bros. Discovery, said earlier this year that the company's gaming business revolves around four key intellectual properties, “all of which are billion-dollar businesses themselves.”
These are Mortal Kombat, Game of Thrones, DC and Harry Potter. While last year's Harry Potter spin-off Hogwarts Legacy was the best-selling game of 2023, Warner made a $200 million loss this year with the once highly anticipated Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said last year that the company was focused on transforming its biggest franchises “from largely console and PC-based with three- to four-year release schedules to including more always-on gameplay through live services, multiplatform and free-to-play extensions, with the goal of more players spending more time on more platforms.”