Versant CEO Mark Lazarus said that the company, which was spun off by Comcast and NBCUniversal earlier this year, is not interested in buying other cable networks.
“Buying more cable assets on a large scale would prolong our life but not necessarily make our life better because we would still have the secular decline,” the CEO said Tuesday at the Axios Media Trends Live conference. “Might there be some interest in another vertical that we could create around a pay television business? Yes, but just buying big networks or a bunch of networks that don’t necessarily change our trajectory is probably not in our short-term future.”
Versant took on a large chunk of NBCU’s cable networks in the spinoff, including networks such as MS NOW, CNBC, USA and Syfy. The company also manages digital properties, including Fandango and Golf Now.
Can Skydance Break the Media M&A Curse?
The CEO said the company is instead more focused on diversifying its revenue “in adjacent businesses that are incredibly powerful consumer branded networks as an amplifier and create bigger businesses,” like golf.
Earlier this month, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery merged to form Skydance and created a media giant with more than 50 cable networks. The company claimed that they are not interested in selling its networks but planned to pay down their debt and invest in other avenues.
When asked specifically about Comcast’s plan to spin out NBCUniversal and whether Versant would ever consider reuniting with the media giant NBCU down the road, Lazarus did not answer straight on.
“Our cash flow is really strong, and I think we will find our path, whether it’s on our own transformation or alongside someone else, but no, that wouldn’t be the plan to necessarily go back to them,” he said.
