One of 🇬🇧 U.K.'s longest takeover battle came to end abrupt end: Ultimately paying £39.0bn for the British pay-TV operator, Comcast outbid its U.S. rival Disney (via 21 Century Fox) by £3.6bn in a rare blind auction at the end of September.
Subsequently, Disney decided to sell its 39% - stake in Sky PLC at the auction-winning price tag of £18.27 per share to the new majority owner. 💰
Combined with the required sale of 22x Regional Sports Networks (+/- $15-22bn), the capital inflow of +/- $15.6 from this divestment could decrease the total net cost of the acquisition of major Fox assets to +/- $35bn for Disney. As a result, more financial resources should be available for the upcoming renewals of the U.S. broadcasting rights to the 🏈 NFL (2021, currently $1.9bn/year), ⚾️ MLB (2021, $700m), and 🏀 NBA (2025, $1.3bn) as well as its transformation into a direct-to-consumer (DTC) business, often coined “Disneyflix.” ➡️ 📱 💻 🖥
Sky, for its parts, has to report to Comcast going forward. How will the ownership change impact the future of the European pay-TV operator in an increasingly competitive sports broadcasting market? While remaining the Premier League's most important media partner, both financially and strategically, pivoting to a more premium strategy regarding its rights portfolio seems to be a viable option in times of skyrocketing rights fees for both premium and, in particular, long-tail content. 📈
By implications: The ⚽️ UEFA Champions League could become an obvious target once its deal with current rights holder BT Sport expires after the 2020/21 season.
In the end, the long-term prospects of rival BT Sport (e.g. carrying Premier League, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League), which recently underwent major cost-cutting moves in terms of its rights portfolio, and recent market entrants Eleven Sports (e.g. NBA, PGA Championships, Serie A, La Liga) and Amazon (e.g. US Open, Premier League, ATP World Tour) are quickly tackled. A final look at DAZN, which ironically is headquartered in London (UK) but has yet to enter the world's second largest sports rights market (+/- $4.1bn in 2016), concludes this blog post. It is hard to imagine that the VC-backed OTT platform will not enter the British market soon. 🧐
