OT: Fox to buy TWC?

[coachcap]

Was just perusing the West Virginia Big 12 conference board (what used to be their conf. realignment board). There's a thread started that, according to multiple sources, Fox has offered $ 88 Billion to purchase Time Warner Cable in order to get a hold of TWC's sports entity contracts. Thoughts as this pertains to C.R.?

 

[Jerry27]

Would be a major power move obviously, but I believe I heard while scrambling to leave for work this morning that TWC shot it down.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/07/16/murdoch-news-corp-time-warner/12721129/

 

[UConnJim]

Was just perusing the West Virginia Big 12 conference board (what used to be their conf. realignment board). There's a thread started that, according to multiple sources, Fox has offered $ 88 Billion to purchase Time Warner Cable in order to get a hold of TWC's sports entity contracts. Thoughts as this pertains to C.R.?

FOX is offering to buy Time Warner (TWX), NOT Time Warner Cable (TWC). TWX includes HBO, Turner Broadcasting (TBS, TNT, CNN, ...), and Warner Brothers (movies and tv shows). FOX said they would divest CNN (since they already own Fox News) to make a deal happen.

FOX's interest in TWX does impact the sports landscape as Turner does have rights to half of the NBA, the NCAA basketball tournament with CBS, some MLB, and some other rights, but has no dedicated cable network. FOX does with, don't laugh, FS1 and FS2. This deal would increase the value of FS1 and probably FS2 as they would now have been content. And, FOX could gain some rights to the B1G in the upcoming media rights deals.

Maybe FS1 and FS2 will become viable sports cable networks. This would only increase the value of the AAC's media rights in the future (remember, Aresco went with the ST contract) and maybe convinces ESPN to not allow the AAC (specifically UConn) to go to FOX. A FOX with the college basketball rights to the Big East, AAC, part of the Big 12 and Pac 12 and maybe part of the B1G as well as a big part of the NCAA tournament is an attractive platform. Maybe ESPN has the ACC grab UConn?

 

[CoastAtlantic]

From my standpoint, that is a lot of dough so that they can air NBA and NCAA games. It would have to involve something much greater at stake, such as market share and streaming content. Maybe Rupert is seriously taking the cord-cutting threat and is scrambling for assets for the inevitable paradigm change.