In a story that has the business world buzzing, media behemoth 21st Century Fox attempted to buy fellow media behemoth Time Warner. Fox operated by Rupert Murdoch offered cash and stock to buy Time Warner. The New York Times reports that Murdoch offered over $85 a share to purchase the company. Time Warner’s board met to consider the offer and rejected it.
Now imagine if this went through and how this could affect the sports media landscape. You would have a combined Fox Sports/Turner Sports entity. It would have combined national rights for the NCAA Tournament, Major League Baseball, MLS, NASCAR, NBA, NFL, World Cup, UEFA Champions League, two major golf tournaments (US Open and PGA Championship) as well as other rights.
In addition, there’s the regional Fox Sports networks that have local rights to MLB, NBA, NHL and college sports. Turner also runs NBA TV and has the digital rights to NCAA.com.
In addition, this would have put HBO Sports, under the Fox-Time Warner umbrella meaning World Championship Boxing and its sports documentary unit would have also been under the fold.
This would have been a huge company to battle ESPN and might have been interesting to see if both sports divisions would have been combined or allowed to run independently with one overseer.
But even though Murdoch has been turned down, it does not mean he won’t try again. Once he puts his mind to something, he’ll keep trying until he succeeds.
Think about this again. This would have combined Fox Sports, Fox Sports 1, Fox Sports Net, Fox Soccer Plus, Fox Deportes, FX, HBO, NBA TV, TBS, TNT, truTV and not to mention Fox News, FXX, Turner Classic Movies, and other networks.
Fox would have sold CNN to avoid any antitrust problems and that might have set off a bidding war for the network.
In the meantime, Time Warner remains off the block for now. We’ll see if Murdoch sweetens his bid or decides to leave the company alone.
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