Comcast Battle With Disney Expands to Multiple Fronts

Comcast and Disney have been finding more and more markets to compete with each other in, and now the battle of corporate giants is really starting to take off.

The two massive entertainment companies have been duking it out for years, though mostly in the arena of blockbuster movies. That. as well as theme parks and NBCUniversal properties, used to comprise the whole of the corporate feud, but the battle is now spreading to more fronts, according to a report by the Philadelphia Business Journal.

Disney and Comcast had a bidding war earlier this year to decide who would acquire Fox. Disney walked away with the prize thanks to its inclusion of a break up fee, despite Comcast’s offer being 16 percent higher overall, according to The Wall Street Journal.

While Fox is now safely in Disney’s hands, the fight continues as the two conglomerates squabble over Sky, a satellite and content company based in the United Kingdom.

“No matter what happens to the company’s ownership over the next few months, we all feel that Sky’s a business in a strong position,” CEO Jeremy Darroch told Bloomberg. “We’re well placed for the future.”

The outlet reported that Comcast has made an informal bid for Sky, offering $31 billion. However, Sky is in a unique position. Not only does its value benefit from the bidding war, but it is one of the few cable companies that is steadily adding subscribers. The company reportedly picked up 38,000 new paying members in the first quarter of 2018, and it recently reported a 5 percent increase in revenue.

Meanwhile, Disney is moving forward with its plan to get its own proprietary streaming service up and running. The company reportedly plans to launch their unnamed platform next year, taking back the content licensed to Netflix and other streaming services as soon as possible.

That move will affect Comast indirectly, as the company’s X1 platform has a growing relationship with Netflix. Already, many Comcast customers access Netflix through their X1 box, and that number is only expected to grow.

Finally, Comcast suffered a serious blow this week when corporate leaders forced MSNBC to air an 8-minute commercial for the company’s “Comcast Cares Day.” The ad promoted a company-wide volunteer day, but many people compared it to the pro-Trump speech fed to local reporters around the country through the Sinclair Broadcast Group.

The corporate struggle for dominance in the entertainment industry has been spread thin across many battlefields, but for viewers, at least those companies are working hard to bring the most compelling content to the market.