Comcast successful in auction for Sky plc

Harry Palmr

Is there a thread for this already? Should be

Anyway the auction set up by the authorities has resulted in a win for Comcast with a bid of 17.28 per share which is 1.50 more than Murdoch's 21st Century Fox.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/sep/22/comcast-outbids-rupert-murdochs-fox-to-win-control-of-sky

micks_address

Harry Palmr wrote: »

Is there a thread for this already? Should be

Anyway the auction set up by the authorities has resulted in a win for Comcast with a bid of 17.28 per share which is 1.50 more than Murdoch's 21st Century Fox.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/sep/22/comcast-outbids-rupert-murdochs-fox-to-win-control-of-sky

Looks like a loss for Disney. Probably a good result for the consumer as Disney owns nearly every production house now..

icdg

The thread title is inaccurate and I’ll be amending it. Sky TV is not now owned by Comcast.

The nature of the auction is such that there is now a bid for Sky plc from Comcast that has been recommended by the independent directors of Sky. They still can’t force Fox to sell its substantial 39% holding in Sky (though it likely will).

Bear in mind Murdoch was exiting Sky either way in this scenario as there is a deal in place for Disney to buy most of Fox (other than the Fox terrestrial network and certain associated properties which are being retained by Murdoch) and this includes the 39% stake in Sky plc.

It’s still a massive development, Murdoch out of Sky and Comcast in. We can only speculate on what might happen if when Sky is integrated into Comcast (and the broadcasting side into NBC Universal).

Wanderer78

Yeaaaa, monopoly's rock! Or do they?

icdg

How does it establish a monopoly? Did Comcast also buy Virgin Media from Malone while we weren’t looking?

Grab All Association

Disney acquisition of 21st will have to be cleared by most competition authorities in Europe including here Ireland by the CCPC as Fox UK/Ireland, National Geographic etc are included. There’ll be a lot of submissions against this no doubt.

I don’t want to see Disney owning the rights to The Simpsons and Family Guy. You think these shows are bad now having jumped the shark (simp season 12, FG season 4) just wait until Disney becomes the pimp for them including merchandising.

Disney is creating a monopoly of entertainment. I’m not happy Paramount is a part of Viacom but I’m glad they (Disney) will never get their grubby little hands on the Star Trek franchise.

icdg

It’ll be far from a monopoly even in the US entertainment industry. The retention by Murdoch of the Fox Network assuades the biggest competition concern US regulators have - to ensure that the “Big 4” terrestrial TV networks - NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox - remain in different hands. Disney was never going to be allowed own both ABC and Fox TV. It’s true that immediately post divestiture Disney will be Fox TV’s biggest programme supplier, but Fox TV will surely be looking to reduce that. It’s acquisition of Thursday Night Football, which eliminates an entire night of programming for 15 weeks of the year, can be seen in that context. I’d suggest that both the Simpsons and Family Guy - the Simpsons in particular - have more years behind them then they do on front of them.

Outside of TV, Disney continues to have significant rivals - Comcast owned NBC Universal is of course one. There’s also Star Trek owner CBS and it’s closely associated friends at Viacom, which as you point out owns Paramount Pictures; and Warner, which is now owned by AT&T. Japanese owned Sony is also a major player. So no, no monopoly there either.

mikeym

Bad news for Sky subscribers.

Prices will go up like Virgin when they bought UPC.

Elmo

mikeym wrote: »

Bad news for Sky subscribers.

Prices will go up like Virgin when they bought UPC.

UPC bought Virgin

icdg

No overall change of ownership was involved when UPC became Virgin Media. As Elmo mentions above, Liberty Global bought Virgin Media in the UK (which was the former NTL, rebranded after it bought Virgin Mobile UK and Telewest).

For internal reasons, it was decided to change UPC Ireland’s reporting relationship within the group, so that it’s management reported to the U.K. operation, not to the then UPC Broadband head office in Amsterdam. (Since then, the Dutch operation has been merged with Ziggo and Vodafone Netherlands and is now only partially owned by Liberty Media, while other UPC operations have been mostly sold off or have ageeements for sale in place).

But it’s not an analogous situation at all. Virgin Media in Ireland is still owned by the same company Liberty Global as it has been since 2006. In fact John Malone has been involved in multichannel TV in Ireland for a long time, since his former company TCI (a distant ancestor of Liberty Global) took a 25% share in Irish Multichannel in 1992.

Elmo

Just to be clear

NTL bought Cablelink
liberty global bought the remainered of chorus
Virgin bought NTL and later sold it’s Irish arm to Liberty global
Liberty global merged both Chours NTL
Eventually renamed it as UPC as other European counterparts
Virgin media UK sold to Liberty global, with UPC Ireland rebranding Virgin Media

lertsnim

mikeym wrote: »

Bad news for Sky subscribers.

Prices will go up

Nothing new so.

icdg

Elmo wrote: »

Just to be clear

NTL bought Cablelink
liberty global bought the remainered of chorus
Virgin bought NTL and later sold it’s Irish arm to Liberty global
Liberty global merged both Chours NTL
Eventually renamed it as UPC as other European counterparts
Virgin media UK sold to Liberty global, with UPC Ireland rebranding Virgin Media

Virgin never bought NTL. As part of the deal that saw NTL take over Virgin Mobile, Virgin ended up with a minority stake (about 11%) in NTL, because NTL paid Virgin in both cash and shares. NTL was at the time trading as “NTL Telewest”, but did a deal to adopt the Virgin brand not long afterwards.

At this point NTL had already sold NTL Ireland, with that deal actually going through seven months before the Virgin deal did.

icdg

Meanwhile to get back to the original topic, 21st Century Fox has today announced that it is accepting Comcast’s offer. It’ll get about £11.5m for the 39% stake it’s held since it demerged from News Corporation, who in turn held it since the merger of Sky and BSB. News originally took a 65% stake in Sky for £5m in 1983, though it had increased that to 80% at the time BSB merged with Sky.

dublinman1990

RTÉ reported today that Comcast now owns 75% of Sky shares. Acquisition will conclude at the end of this month.

https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2018/1004/1000844-comcast-sky-deal/

icdg

Comcast has passed the 90% threshold to compulsory acquire the outstanding Sky shares, and Sky will now be delisted from the LSE by November 7th and reregister as a private limited company.