What sounds better: Comcast-Fox or Disney-Fox?
After a judge’s approval of the AT&T-Warner acquisition, media players can now move forward with highly anticipated mergers of their own. Namely, Disney and Comcast will fight like siblings over 21st Century Fox.
The firms have both targeted Fox for similar reasons that AT&T purchased Time Warner Cable. If either company acquires Fox, they will have rights to their profitable TV channels like FX and films such as “Avatar” and “X-Men.” This will allow them to compete with Netflix, which recently eclipsed Disney in market value.
However, the AT&T-Warner ruling does not ensure anything for either Disney or Comcast. A Comcast-Fox merger would be most similar to AT&T-Warner, as it would be a content distributor trying to buy a content creator. Disney-Fox would be very different, for both firms are content creators. In fact, they are the largest and fourth-largest movie studios, respectively, in the world.
So far, it seems that Disney has the upper hand in acquiring Fox. They have already locked in their bid of $52.4 billion, and owner Rupert Murdoch seemingly favors the content creator over the distributor.
However, preferences may not matter if a ruling bans the merger of two companies that regularly dominate the Box Office. In fact, Disney and Fox have six of the top ten highest grossing films of all time, including “Avatar” at the top of the list.
After Tuesday’s ruling, a Comcast-Fox merger seems more likely than Disney-Fox. Nonetheless, the next couple months will be exciting for the media world, affecting both producers and consumers regardless of the outcome.
Related: Comcast can only acquire Fox with a mountain of debt
Featured image via Flickr/Marco Verch
