Comcast's Offer for Fox Could Spur an Intense Bidding War

CREDIT: Rob Dobi for Variety
Inset: CREDIT: Rob Dobi for Variety


Media companies are grappling with massive, fast-growing competitors like Apple, Amazon and Netflix. The counter-strategy these days seems to hinge on finding new partners, and Comcast is making an outlandish move to keep one potential ally from running into the arms of another.

With its audacious May 23 maneuver to pluck valuable pieces of 21st Century Fox out of the hands of its confirmed suitor, the Walt Disney Co., the Philadelphia media giant is making a bold play for a chunk of assets that might help it grow and compete more fiercely in a rapidly shifting industry.



Disney and Fox agreed last year to a $52.4 billion deal that would send Fox's studios and cable networks, as well as its stake in European broadcaster Sky and a passel of regional sports networks, to Disney. It's a pact that would transform the already dominant Disney into a veritable juggernaut - augmenting its Marvel movie properties, bolstering its ESPN sports-cable empire and giving it significantly more heft in the content game. Comcast said it would make an all-cash bid for the Fox assets "at a premium to the value of the current all-share offer from Disney."

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