Key Points
- People Inc., formerly IAC, already owns 26.1% of MGM Resorts.
- It offered $48.30 a share on June 1 to buy the rest of the company.
- The bid values MGM Resorts at more than $18 billion.
- Diller said MGM has assets "AI cannot easily replicate or disintermediate."
Barry Diller built his fortune on screens — Paramount, Fox, USA Networks, and the digital conglomerate IAC. On June 1, his company made an $18 billion case that the next safe asset is the opposite of digital: concrete, carpet, and blackjack tables. People Inc., the IAC successor that now owns People magazine and a stable of former IAC titles, offered to buy the 73.9% of MGM Resorts International it does not already own at $48.30 a share, valuing the casino operator at more than $18 billion.
The terms
People Inc. already holds 26.1% of MGM, a stake worth roughly $2.9 billion that it began assembling about six years ago. The all-cash offer of $48.30 a share is a 10.6% premium over MGM's prior Friday close of $43.67. If the deal closes, People Inc. would control just over 50.1% of MGM's equity, and the casino company's current management is expected to stay in place.
The bet against AI
Diller was explicit about the logic. The company invested in MGM, he said, because it is "a rare kind of business: one with real-world assets that AI cannot easily replicate or disintermediate, and exceptional digital growth opportunities." While the AI IPO frenzy pours capital into models that can be cloned and undercut in a quarter, one of media's original empire-builders is buying physical property — casino floors, hotel towers, a Las Vegas Strip footprint — precisely because software cannot disintermediate a roulette wheel.
The digital half
It is not purely a brick-and-mortar play. MGM owns half of BetMGM, the online sports-betting and iGaming joint venture, which supplies the "digital growth" half of Diller's pitch — a regulated, license-gated business that is hard for a startup to replicate. The structure pairs AI-resistant real estate underneath with a digital betting arm on top.
Source: CBS News, The Hollywood Reporter
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