Comcast owns NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC News. Both Apple and Comcast have looked at acquiring MGM in recent years and determined its value to be about $6 billion, two sources familiar with those talks said.
The Mirage opened in 1989 under previous owner Steve Wynn and was purchased in 2000 by MGM. The deal is a financial win for MGM, which was reportedly valued at just $5.5 billion, including debt, at the end of last year. MGM owns about a dozen properties in Las Vegas, including the Bellagio, MGM Grand and Mandalay Bay. Smaller Hollywood players such as ViacomCBS, Fox Corp., Lionsgate and AMC are all likely to be acquired within a matter of years, many industry insiders predict. Discovery and WarnerMedia announced plans to merge last week. The deal comes amid a new round of consolidation in media as companies seek greater scale to compete in streaming against bigger companies such as Netflix and Disney. MGM Resorts International is a holding company, which engages in the ownership and operations of casino resorts. MGM is Amazon’s second-biggest acquisition ever following the $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods in 2017. The deal will give the e-commerce and cloud computing giant a famed studio and catalog of film and television titles to beef up its Amazon Prime streaming service, from the James Bond and 'Rocky' franchises to TV series such as “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Fargo.” The casino operator eliminated more than 1,000 jobs, mostly in Las Vegas, last year as part of its MGM 2020 cost-cutting plan sold the Bellagio’s real estate to Blackstone for around 4.2.
