Channels with Peter Kafka · Nov 4, 2026 · 44m · 37m saved
With Barry Diller, Chairman and Senior Executive of IAC
Photo: David Shankbone, CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
IAC already owns 26% of MGM Resorts and could have pushed that stake to a controlling 51%, financed through a private-equity-style structure Barry Diller had never used before. Barry, chairman and senior executive of IAC, told Peter Kafka on Channels that he got uncomfortable with the mechanics and called the whole plan off, even though he still believes the underlying thesis.
"No disintermediation is coming between a person who wants to go to a place and that place." — Barry Diller
Barry built IAC and 20th Century Fox before it, and at 84 he still runs the company day to day, placing a $2.7 billion bet on legacy print magazines in 2021 when most investors had written the category off.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 44 minutes of audio, 7 minutes of reading.
Here are the 5 takeaways that matter.
Key Takeaways
IAC walked away from a controlling stake in MGM Resorts, but Barry still calls Las Vegas real estate nearly unbeatable
He jokes only burial sites might be a better hedge
IAC's magazine business lost 60% of its Google traffic and is growing anyway
It now prints about 275 million magazine copies a year
Barry's "inversion" strategy turns magazine expertise into owned products, not licensing deals
21 such projects are underway
"There is no such thing as AI advertising... as a category" yet, Barry says
Barry believes Netflix has already won the streaming wars
He says he called it five to seven years ago
1. Why the MGM Deal Fell Apart
Barry called off IAC's plan to take MGM Resorts private once he got deep into raising third-party money and negotiating balance-sheet terms for a financing structure his firm had never used before.
Barry says he simply got uncomfortable with the mechanics of the MGM deal
"Like most things, at least for me, it begins and ends with instinct." — Barry Diller
MGM then floated the reverse idea, buying out IAC's stake entirely, which Barry was also "dubious" about; that counter-proposal died within about a week. He stressed that none of this changed his underlying view of the asset.
Barry says he is ready to reverse course the moment a smarter idea appears
"I'm ready to turn on any dime that sounds smarter to me than the previous nickel." — Barry Diller
Asked what beats Las Vegas real estate as a hedge, Barry joked that only burial sites might, adding, "I can't think of anything else that is a better thing than this." He pointed to IAC's roughly 40% share of every dollar spent on the Las Vegas Strip as the scale of the position he was reluctant to just sell off.
