“I could see how Disney wanted to cut a deal quickly if delay meant increasing the prospects of a Comcast counter,” Hal Singer, economist at George Washington University’s Institute of Public Policy, wrote in an email.
In announcing the approval, the
Justice Departmentnoted that “to streamline agency clearance, Disneyagreed to divest the 22 RSNs rather than continue with the Antitrust Division’s ongoing merger investigation.” In other words, it became clear to Disney what the Justice Department’s major concern was with the deal: Disney’s purchase of the RSNs would harm competition for sports programming in those local markets. Rather than try to challenge that contention or negotiate some kind of conditions, a process that could have taken many more months, Disney agreed to the type of structural remedy favored by the DOJ under antitrust chief
Makan Delrahim.
