Today Disney announced that they have agreed to sell the local rights for the Fox Sports channel in Brazil to get approval for their merger with Fox. This comes as Disney already agreed to sell off the Fox Regional Sports Networks in the United States.
As part of the deal to get U.S. Department of Justice approval for the Disney and Fox merger there was a requirement that the Fox Regional Sports Networks (RSNs) would be sold off. According to the deal, when Disney closes on the sale of most of 21st Century Fox, they would sell off the regional sports networks currently running under the Fox Sports name. There was a fear that Disney owning ESPN, ABC, and the Fox regional sports networks would give them to much power in the world of sports.
Now we have reports that Disney plans to split up FOX’s regional sports networks and sell them separately. Earlier it had been expected that Disney would sell them as part of a single deal. According to reports Amazon, Sinclair, CHearter, and TENGA, to name a few are all bidding on the FOX RSNs including YES Network according to sources that talked with CNBC. It had been previously reported that YouTube was also interested, but as of today, there are no reports of YouTube bidding on FOX RSNs.
The exact timeline of this deal was not disclosed, but many expect that Disney will soon close on their deal to buy most of Fox.
Source: Reuters
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