The Lord of the Rings has a new rights owner. What does that mean?

polygon.com:

Embracer Group, the ambitious, acquisition-hungry Swedish gaming conglomerate, has bought the rights to make films, games, merchandise and theme parks based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

The deal comes as a surprise. Reporting on the sale of the rights by the Saul Zaentz Company earlier this year, Variety said the buyer was expected to be a Hollywood studio or tech giant. Amazon, which is about to debut its streaming series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, was a prime candidate. Variety also said the rights were expected to fetch at least $2 billion. Although the purchase price was undisclosed, it appears Embracer has acquired Middle-earth Enterprises, the Zaentz subsidiary that owns the rights, for significantly less than that.

Embracer announced the deal alongside five other, smaller acquisitions: Limited Run Games, the publisher of collectable physical editions of games; Tripwire Interactive, the developer and publisher of games like Killing Floor and Maneater; Singtrix, a company that creates vocal effects technology for karaoke and gaming; and Tuxedo Labs, developer of the destruction game Teardown. The sixth and final acquisition remains secret for now — but Embracer said it was the third or fourth largest of the deals, so it’s not major.

In a financial note, Embracer said the likely total cost of acquiring the six businesses, over a period of time, is expected to be 8.2 billion Swedish krona, which is around $788 million. Even if we assume the value of Middle-earth Enterprises to make up the vast majority of that sum, it’s still less than half what the prized Lord of the Rings rights were expected to fetch.

What happened? And how come Amazon or another major entertainment