Microsoft CEO confident Activision Blizzard acquisition won’t be blocked

Anytime a large company like Microsoft makes a move to acquire another company, it garners the attention of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which critically reviews deals in the interest of antitrust law.

And when Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was asked about whether he had concerns that the deal could be blocked by the FTC in an interview with the Financial Times, he expressed confidence that the company would have no issue closing on its deal to acquire Activision Blizzard.

The deal will only make Microsoft the third biggest company in the video game industry behind Sony and Tencent, according to Nadella. 

“It shows how fragmented content creation platforms are,” Nadella said. “So, that’s the fundamental category. Yes, we will be a big player in what is a highly fragmented place.”

Immediately following the announcement of the deal in mid-January, conversations on business news network CNBC naturally included talks about whether the deal would be problematic through an antitrust or monopolistic lens—and the general consensus from talking heads was that it wouldn’t be. 

Notable personalities on the network like David Faber and Jim Cramer noted that while Microsoft has been more critically reviewed from an antitrust perspective in the past, the company hasn’t been viewed that way in the last few years.

Following the deal’s announcement, Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick and Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer went onto CNBC as well to discuss numerous issues regarding the acquisition.

With much larger companies, like Facebook’s parent company Meta and Google’s parent company Alphabet, being seen as larger threats from a monopolistic perspective, Microsoft likely won’t need to worry about the FTC preventing their deal from going through.