21st Century Fox Sell itself to Disney

A bit like when ITV bought UTV. I've never heard the word 'bit' overstated so much in all my life.

However, it's likely that the agreement will be that Fox can use, well, FOX, and Disney can use 20th Century Fox. It's bound to affect the searchlight branding on Fox Broadcasting stuff though. If Fox News retained that branding for instance, and brought the name into further disrepute, it could damage the value of a Disney property.

Interestingly though, every single Fox trademark is registered to 20th Century Fox (the film company), so maybe Fox Broadcasting will licence the name from Disney.

The Fox Sports regional networks are included in the deal, which as rdd pointed out with be beneficial to ESPN.

Interestingly enough the Australian pay-TV company FOXTEL, which is part owned by News Corp Australia (in that odd part of th Fox-News Corp demerger that the Australian pay-TV assets stay with News Corp), rebranded a few months back to remove all traces of the Fox brand other than the name Fox (it uses a lowercase logo now). Fox Sports Australia still uses the same logo as the US operation. None of that’s effected of course by this deal, but i thought the move away from the Fox brand interesting.

As I say, it’ll probably be a deal to share the name with an undertaking that the two companies do not directly compete.

All sorts of little oddities pop up when you think about it. For example in another thread someone mentioned Sky's share of Nickelodeon UK. BT Sport's deal with ESPN still has quite a few years on it, meaning one Disney sport brand would be licenced to the biggest competitor of another. I'm sure there's loads more things like that.

Regarding the Regional Sport Channels. I can imagine Disney dumping the Fox Branding and dragging them up under the ESPN Branding.

The Washington Post just posted an article right after I posted this. They are speculating that the estimated $20 billion paid for the Regional Sport Channels could really help ESPN's bottom line and that ESPN rebrand them to ESPN Regional Sports. Interesting Article.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/12/14/disney-fox-deal-gives-espn-a-local-strategy-to-combat-its-financial-woes/?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.896506570f9c

http://cdn1.thecomeback.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/94/2012/08/foxsportsregionalmap.jpg

And even the Foxtel trademark is owned by 20th Century Fox Film Corporation. I wonder if there's a specific reason for that.

Bob Iger was just asked on @BloombergTV whether @SkyNews had a future under Disney's ownership and he replied: "Absolutely"

— Ian King (@IanKingSky) December 14, 2017

Not only that, but the IFE and MTM archives are owned by

Included in the take over is the 21CF's stake in National Geographic Partners (the rest are owned by the Nat Geo Society). Will it affect Disney's own documentary film label DisneyNature?

They had Rupert Murdoch doing an interview on Sky News in their studio.

Probably improve it.

That's one of the pleasing things about the sale, Disney seems to me to be a much better owner of something like Nat Geo than Fox.
https://gizmodo.com/national-geographic-is-now-owned-by-a-climate-denier-1729683793