Ken Trent | B2B Negotiations @eCommKen

Coaches/Sales teams: I'm going to run a (free) 8-week pilot to help you improve your close rates and margins through better negotiations. All I ask is for your honest results and a review if I've helped. If interested, please like/comment so I can connect with you.

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What happens when you focus on the end customer? Telefónica (telecommunications and digital technology provider) and DAZN (sports streaming & PPV) had to solve a problem every operator eventually hits. Two companies paid for halves of the same product, and the customer only wants the whole thing. LaLiga (Spain's premier soccer/football league) sold the 2027/28 through 2031/32 residential rights in two packages. Telefónica closed its half last June. DAZN took the other half. Each side controls five matches a week inside a residential cycle valued at €5.25 billion. Telefónica's Movistar Plus+ business is built on being the complete football home in Spain. It already holds UEFA club rights there through 2031. Five LaLiga matches a week does not complete that promise. It leaves a hole in the weekend. DAZN's problem sat on the other side of the same table. A streamer that just bought a national league package still has to pay for it, and keep a direct relationship with fans. If they treat this as a fight over who owns the window, the deal gets stupid fast. If it's exclusive to Telefónica, DAZN weakens its own product. If it's exclusive to DAZN, Movistar cannot sell completeness. But if they force a midpoint, Spanish households need two subscriptions to watch a full matchday. The negotiations principle that's critical to understand in this deal is to focus on Mutual Value. Compromise assumes a fixed pie. Mutual value looks for ways to expand it. Their solution was that they stopped arguing about exclusivity and traded what each side actually needed to generate mutual value. Telefónica needed the missing five matches on Movistar. DAZN needed cash against the rights it already bought, without handing over the customer. On September 15, Telefónica disclosed a non-exclusive distribution agreement to Spain's securities regulator. The public terms: - Telefónica pays DAZN €1.65 billion, about €330 million a season, for 2027/28 through 2031/32 - Movistar Plus+ carries DAZN's five LaLiga matches every matchday, all 38 rounds - DAZN keeps the right to sell those same matches on its own platform - Telefónica already owns the other five matches directly from the league That structure lets Movistar Plus+ keep offering 100 percent of Primera División. DAZN still sells its matches itself. The fee rose from about €280 million a season under the prior deal, and coverage rose from 35 matchdays to all 38. Nobody pursued a compromise or middle ground deal. Telefónica paid more to buy a complete catalog. DAZN collected a sublicense and kept its channel. Different needs. Same end customer. Mutual value. The take home lesson here is that when both parties can deliver value to each other, the outcome produces a great deal they everyone is happy with. Before you lock a partner in a fight over who owns the customer, identify what each side actually needs for it to be a good deal. Because at the end of the day, it's often the same customer.

One of the cheapest tactics I know of in negotiations is using false deadlines/urgency. This works in B2C deals because after you realize you got screwed it's too late to do anything about it. But it's an absolute relationship killer in B2B negotiations. Don't do it.

Elon Musk remains undefeated. 😂

Elon Musk @elonmusk

9 hours ago

@YourAnonOne It’s a nice Airstream

3K 1K 52K 642K 454

@xoaanya That's all I use... 🤷‍♂️

@elonmusk It's genuinely incredible that they thought this was so big a win that they published it in the NYT.

@FiredUpCoug Unpopular opinion: dads gotta be allowed to do dad stuff. Our ancestors never brought down a wooly mammoth by playing it safe. And yes, I understand that he's catching a baseball and not feeding his family. Please read below for rage replies. 👇 🫡

Going to the gym is stupid. I lift heavy 3x per week without fail. Try to eat right. Try to sleep 7+ hours every night. And the day I get 4 hours of sleep after being sick all week, and I'm up since 3am, is the day I PR. 🙄

@TheMuppetPastor And here I was, imagining a nice farmer with a cigarette and his forearms resting lightly on the fence rail. I was not prepared for the punch line.

@dennis_geelen "we're like family". I'm very pro-capitalism, but I never worked a 23 hour shift in a warehouse for "family".

@MikeTheElite Minecraft is never unprofessional.

@KeepyCash Crazy that so many people just take it. I would have done exactly what you did.

@allegrajacchia Did any of it involve fixing the buggy appeals process by chance?

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In December 2025, Netflix had what looked like a closed path into Warner Bros. The Warner Bros. Discovery board had chosen Netflix's bid for the studio, HBO, Max, and the streaming business, a package valued at about $82.7 billion, with the cable networks carved out and spun off. Then Paramount Skydance refused to treat that agreement as the last word. The hard part was not the headline price. It was that the two bidders were not buying the same company. Netflix wanted the assets that belonged on a streaming P&L. Paramount, under David Ellison, wanted all of Warner Bros. Discovery, linear networks included, and it was paying in cash. After Netflix announced the deal on December 5, Paramount launched a hostile all-cash tender, then kept amending. By February 26, 2026, Warner's board was looking at: - $31 a share in cash - a $7 billion regulatory breakup fee - a ticking fee of 25 cents a share each quarter after September 30, 2026 if closing slipped - a promise to cover the $2.8 billion Warner would owe Netflix to tear up the first agreement. The board called that a superior proposal and opened a window for Netflix to match. This is where auctions wreck otherwise careful operators. Matching would have meant paying a number Netflix had not underwritten, for a bundle it had not asked for, just to avoid losing in public. The negotiations principle that's critical to understand in this deal is to focus on Absolute Profit Dollars. The job is to improve your position in profits you can actually deposit in a bank, not to keep the trophy or the narrative. Co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters said that at the price required to match, the deal was "no longer financially attractive," and "always a 'nice to have' at the right price, not a 'must have' at any price." What they didn't do was to invent a new strategy on the fly. Instead, they measured the sweetened bid against the original profit case and declined to rewrite the case to save face. Netflix declined to match that same day, and the next day Warner Bros. Discovery signed with Paramount. Netflix still got paid: Paramount covered the $2.8 billion termination fee, and Netflix shares jumped after hours. Warner shareholders later approved the Paramount deal. For now, closing remains tied up in court. And for Netflix, the relevant close had already happened. They protected the P&L, took a fee, and pointed the cash back toward about $20 billion in their own films and series. The take home lesson here is that if you're in a B2B fight, convert the live offer into profit dollars before you decide whether to match. When a rival, a retailer, or a vendor puts a "superior" package on the table, check whether they are even buying the same bundle you are. Matching someone else's structure is not competing if it forces you to fund assets and terms you did not want. Then ask one question: does this next move improve absolute profit, or are we trying to save face? If it only keeps you in the room, you already have the answer.

@Umesh__digital sudo rm /* -rf What do I win?

@FiredUpCoug I'm only here to support your habit. Godspeed, sir. 🫡

@Tokyo_Trev I would believe this if it were even *possible* to make a perfect brisket on your first try. But it's still wholesome and I love it.

@techguy_x Remind everyone that they can sign up for my negotiations newsletter at insiders.negotiationsacademy.com. 👀