Media, showbiz ripe for ’17 takeover: rpt.

Consolidation in the media and entertainment industries will pick up in 2017, sparked by shifting consumer habits and expected relaxed antitrust enforcement by a Trump White House, a report from a media analyst on Tuesday predicted.

Epix, MGM, Pandora, Spotify, T-Mobile and WWE are each fingered by BTIG’s Richard Greenfield as takeover targets.

Comcast, to keep pace with AT&T, which in 2015 gobbled up DirecTV and is in the process of buying Time Warner, will be on the acquisition hunt, Greenfield predicted. Possible targets include Epix and T-Mobile.

After noting Comcast has no platform for SVOD (Subscription Video on Demand), the analyst said an Epix acquisition would allow the media conglomerate to license its Universal movies to the premium channel and offer Epix to its subscribers.

Comcast’s interest in T-Mobile could be as a spoiler — to thwart a tie-up with Sprint — or strategic, Greenfield said. T-Mobile’s national wireless platform would strengthen Comcast’s ability to go head-to-head against AT&T.

BTIG also expects MGM to be swallowed by AT&T to give it the Bond franchise and “a robust unscripted TV production unit.”

And although Pandora has maintained that it wants to remain independent, competition will drive the music streamer into the arms of a suitor, perhaps Sirius, the analyst predicted.

Spotify could also fall — if only because no big media player can resist delivering “other product offerings such as video content” to Spotify’s 40 million subscribers, BTIG said.

Expectations that WWE will crack the China market this year made it a takeover target, BTIG predicts.

None of the companies has made overtures to buy or be bought, and the opinions belong only to BTIG.