After a relatively short seven-month process, one of the biggest mergers in modern media history has reached the goal line.
Disney and 21st Century Fox shareholders voted Friday to approve Disney’s $71.3 billion acquisition of most Fox assets, including the 20th Century Fox movie and television studios and the FX cable networks. The deal also includes the 22 Fox Sports-owned regional sports networks, which the justice department has required Disney sell within 90 days of closing.
With Disney already having won U.S. government approval for the merger — a result of the above-mentioned agreement to divest the Fox RSNs — the next step is to win international approval from the European Union, China and others.
Bloomberg reported Friday that there is some concern that China could use its regulatory role as retaliation against the United States’ recent trade shenanigans, a prospect that had Fox shares trading “as though there’s about a 20 percent chance the deal will fail.”
The Disney-Fox deal has been simultaneously more and less difficult than anticipated. That Disney and Fox could win U.S. government approval so quickly was unexpected, especially given how unusually aggressive the justice department has been in opposing AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner — and to a much lesser extent, Sinclair Broadcasting’s acquisition of Tribune’s local affiliates.
At the same time, the deal was threatened on multiple occasions by Comcast, which mounted a spoiler bid earlier this summer and — for a time — appeared to be gearing up for a bidding war. Comcast dropped out of the bidding last week.
As far as the sports media industry is concerned, the intrigue surrounding Disney-Fox is only just beginning. Assuming the deal does go through, the next question is which company — or companies — will acquire the Fox RSNs.
