Sinclair, Tegna and Amazon Bid for Sports Networks
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When Fox sold their sports networks to Disney it was an asset that Disney wanted to turn around and sell.
They put the Fox Sports Nets up for bid and got some interesting offers in the first round of bidding.
CNBC writes that Amazon put in a bid for all of the 22 regional sports TV networks that Disney acquired from Fox.
The e-commerce giant's bid includes the New York-based YES Network, sources familiar with the matter told CNBC. It is bidding for the New York network along with an unknown sovereign wealth fund and the Yankees, the sources said. YES may be sold separately from the other networks.
In addition to Amazon, Apollo Global Management, KKR, The Blackstone Group, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Tegna also made first-round bids for the full slate of networks, the sources said.
Fox, which owns the YES Network with the New York Yankees, was seen as a front-runner to bid for the nearly two dozen regional networks. They broadcast the games of 44 professional teams from Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League.
Fox itself did not submit a bid in the first round for the networks although there's potential that it will join in the second round, the sources told CNBC. Earlier this year, Fox sold some television and movie assets to Disney, which owns the sports channel ESPN. The Justice Department forced Disney to sell the Fox regional sports networks to get that deal done.
The second round of bids is expected before year-end and due diligence on the bids begins next week. CNBC was unable to learn the amounts of the bids.
