Seven years ago today, the entertainment industry woke up to a new reality. At 12:02 a.m. Eastern Time on March 20, 2019, one of the most consequential corporate mergers in the history of television and film became official. The Walt Disney Company completed its acquisition of the majority of 21st Century Fox’s assets for $71.3 billion, bringing to a close a dramatic, high-stakes deal that had captivated Hollywood, Wall Street, and boardrooms around the world for more than a year.
The deal did not happen overnight. It was born from a recognition, widely shared in the industry, that the old ways of doing business in entertainment were collapsing under the weight of digital disruption. Facing growing competition from emerging streaming platforms Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube, Disney sought to reinforce its market position and competitive edge. The acquisition of Fox’s prized entertainment assets was a bold answer to that challenge.
How It All Began
The seeds of the merger were planted in late 2017. On November 6, 2017, CNBC reported that The Walt Disney Company was negotiating a deal with Rupert Murdoch to acquire 21st Century Fox’s filmed entertainment, cable entertainment, and direct broadcast satellite divisions, including 20th Century Fox, FX Networks, and National Geographic Partners.
On December 14, 2017, The Walt Disney Company officially announced that it was acquiring most of Fox’s parent company, 21st Century Fox, including the film studio. The initial price agreed upon was $52.4 billion — a staggering sum, though one that would only grow larger before the ink was dry.
Enter Comcast: A Bidding War Erupts
What seemed like a done deal was thrown into turmoil in the spring of 2018. Comcast decided in May of 2018 to try and outbid Disney with an unsolicited offer to Fox, kicking off a new bidding war. The timing was no accident. On June 12, 2018, AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner was finally approved by the Department of Justice, setting a precedent for an acquisition of the same scale. The very next day, Comcast put in an all-cash counter-offer of $65 billion.
Disney did not blink. The company fired back with a sweetened offer, and the numbers kept climbing. Disney ultimately won the bidding war with a final offer of $71.3 billion, which was $5 billion more than Comcast’s bid. On July 19, 2018, the battle was over. Comcast dropped out of the bidding for 21st Century Fox, leaving Disney in pole position to acquire Fox.Disney and Fox shareholders officially voted to approve the $71.3 billion deal on July 27, 2018.
Regulatory Hurdles Across the Globe
Winning the bidding war was one thing. Winning over governments around the world was another. The deal required approvals from regulators across multiple continents, and each came with conditions. Mexico’s telecom regulator, the Federal Telecommunications Institute, approved the deal on March 11, 2019, under the condition that Disney and Fox agree to sell Fox Sports in the country within six months — clearing the last major holdout on the deal.
In the United States, Disney and 21st Century Fox entered into a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice under which Disney would divest 21st Century Fox’s Regional Sports Networks.
What Disney Got — and What It Didn’t
Not everything on the Fox lot came with the deal. On the eve of the acquisition’s completion, Fox’s news and broadcast operations were deliberately carved out. Earlier that day, 21st Century Fox completed the spin-off of a portfolio of its news, sports and broadcast businesses — including the FOX News Channel, FOX Business Network, FOX Broadcasting Company, FOX Sports, FOX Television Stations Group, and sports cable networks FS1, FS2, Fox Deportes and Big Ten Network — into the newly-formed Fox Corporation.
What Disney did receive was an extraordinary trove of entertainment assets. The acquisition included 21st Century Fox’s renowned film production businesses, including Twentieth Century Fox, Fox Searchlight Pictures, Fox 2000 Pictures, Fox Family and Fox Animation; Fox’s television creative units, Twentieth Century Fox Television, FX Productions and Fox21; FX Networks; National Geographic Partners; Fox Networks Group International; Star India; and Fox’s interests in Hulu, Tata Sky and Endemol Shine Group.
The additional Hulu portion took Disney’s stake in the streamer to 60 percent, with Comcast owning 30 percent and AT&T’s WarnerMedia holding 10 percent.
The Bigger Picture
The timing of the deal was no coincidence. Disney CEO Bob Iger had a singular vision: position the company at the forefront of the streaming revolution. The acquisition was designed to expand Disney’s direct-to-consumer offerings, which included ESPN+ for sports fans and the highly-anticipated Disney+ streaming video-on-demand service launching in late 2019. Disney+ would go on to attract tens of millions of subscribers in its first year alone, a launch made vastly more powerful by the wealth of Fox content now sitting in the Disney vault.
Under the terms of the acquisition, Disney would phase out Fox brand usage by 2024 to avoid consumer confusion in the marketplace. The legendary 20th Century Fox name, which had graced cinema screens for nearly a century, was eventually rebranded as 20th Century Studios.
Looking back seven years on, the Disney-Fox merger stands as a defining moment in the transformation of modern entertainment — a deal driven by streaming ambition, fueled by a fierce corporate rivalry, and sealed just after midnight on a quiet Wednesday morning in March 2019.
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