It's worth mentioning that when MPEG-LA was born, the way multimedia was moved around was quite different to how it is today. Back then it was generally transferred via physical mediums so the cost of both the codec royalties as well as the storage medium could easily be passed onto the customers ("customers" in this context doesn't necessarily mean end users). Whereas these days it's more commonly provided as a service with a fee and where the supplier has to pay for the bandwidth used. This means they have an added incentive now to improve codecs in a way that wasn't there 20 years ago because by improving codecs they can now reduce their costs while charging the same amount to their customers.
But the practical reality is that these companies are doing the exact opposite with AV1:
http://aomedia.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1
The Alliance for Open Media was formed because royalty-free audio and video formats save everyone time and money, particularly in the context of the complicated licensing terms for HEVC.
Netflix, Google, Apple, and Amazon all do business on the web and the W3C's royalty-free patent policy benefits everyone:
https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20170801/