Brian Roberts, chief executive officer of Comcast., left, and Shari Redstone, ViacomCBS chairman
Photo: From left: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg News; Martina Albertazzi/Bloomberg News
Comcast Corp. CMCSA -1.60% Chief Executive Brian Roberts met with ViacomCBS Inc. VIAC -1.04% Chairman Shari Redstone in recent weeks to discuss a potential streaming partnership for international markets, according to people familiar with the matter, a sign the media giants see opportunities to join forces.
During the meeting, which was held around the end of June in New York, and which also included ViacomCBS Chief Executive Robert Bakish, the executives discussed a variety of possible business partnerships that would allow the companies to enter non-U.S. markets together, the people said.
The partnership talks come as both Comcast and ViacomCBS are preparing to expand their streaming services in international markets.
In May, ViacomCBS said its Paramount+ service would be available in 45 markets by 2022. In April, Mr. Roberts said that Comcast was looking to strike partnerships with local programmers and distributors in overseas markets to boost Peacock, the service launched by its NBCUniversal division. Comcast’s Sky Plc unit in Europe also has a streaming operation.
(More to come.)
—Cara Lombardo contributed to this article.
Write to Benjamin Mullin at [email protected] and Lillian Rizzo at [email protected]
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