By the time many of us meet up at Celebration Chicago in April, the Disney / Fox purchase will be complete. With the deal looking to be done by early March, quite possibly sometime in February, all that remains are a few final agreements to put in place and then the entertainment world will finally hit that seismic shift we’ve all been anticipating.
Fox confirmed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Friday that it “does not intend” to make a run at any of the RSNs about to change hands. The Disney-21st Century Fox transaction is expected to close by early March, if not early February. Disney has to sell the local cablers to comply with the terms of the agreement it reached last year with the Justice Department clearing the way for the $71.3 billion transaction.
There’d been speculation that the new Fox set to emerge after the Disney deal is done would try to buy back those 22 outlets. The RSNs were valued at about $20 billion in the terms of the Disney-21st Century Fox transaction. It’s still unclear how robust the market is for Disney’s mandated sale process.
