Comcast Positioned to Win UK Bidding War for Sky

The complicated four way acquisition battle between Disney, 21st Century Fox, Sky (Sky Broadband) and Comcast took an interesting turn yesterday after the latter dropped its own pursuit of Fox, which market analysts suggest will leave Disney to gobble Fox but open the door to a Comcast buy of Sky (i.e. Fox probably won’t bid again).

A few years ago it was all much simpler, when we only had Rupert Murdoch‘s (Fox) long running pursuit of Sky to consider. Then Disney decided that they wanted to buy Fox, which also meant they became involved in the potential acquisition of Sky. Following that Comcast entered the fray, initially with an interest in Sky and then expanding (some would say, strategically) that to include a possible purchase of Fox.

At this point the whole bidding war became a complicated mess but recently Comcast had begun to signal to the market that they might stop their pursuit of Fox, which would leave the company to be gobbled by Disney. The suggestion is that Disney might in turn decline to increase their bid for Sky, leaving the latter to Comcast (they last made a $34bn proposal).

Comcast Statement

“Comcast does not intend to pursue further the acquisition of the Twenty-First Century Fox assets and, instead, will focus on our recommended offer for Sky.”

Brian Roberts, Comcast CEO, added:

“I’d like to congratulate Bob Iger and the team at Disney and commend the Murdoch family and Fox for creating such a desirable and respected company.”

In terms of broadband provision, Comcast are probably a better bet for Sky than Fox would have been. Fox was always much more interested in Sky for their TV and media empire, which left a distinct air of uncertainty to hang around the operator’s broadband ISP business in the UK.

Lest we forget that Sky Broadband is still the second biggest broadband provider in the UK after BT. But you’d be forgiven for not knowing that given how quiet they’ve been in the heated debate around future “full fibre” (FTTP/H) network provision. Sky ruled itself out of the full fibre race over a year ago and they’ve been virtually silent on the subject ever since. We don’t even know if they plan to offer G.fast based ultrafast broadband.

By comparison Comcast are a more broadband centric business and they’d be much more likely to shake things up in a positive way, as well as being more politically and publicly acceptable with fewer regulatory barriers to worry about. Most UK people don’t know who Comcast are but precious few are fans of Murdoch.

Under the wings of Comcast we could see Sky adopt a much more aggressive position in the UK broadband market again, not least of which could include a greater focus on building or acquiring more of their own network infrastructure. Sky are already on the path to replacing Satellite based TV provision with a broadband based model so this would fit nicely into that particular picture.

We should know the outcome of all this very soon.