Kabuki Dances or Rube Goldberg Machines? Vertical Analyses of Media Mergers

By Cristina Caffarra, Gregory S. Crawford & Helen Weeds – 

In his recent opinion in the AT&T/Time Warner merger, Judge Richard Leon described the bargaining models presented by the government as a “Kabuki Dance” and a “Rube Goldberg Machine.” We summarize key considerations in recent vertical media mergers in the U.S. and EU and show how AT&T/TW deviated from these in important ways: in failing to consider that the integrated entity might foreclose over-the-top video