Executive Chairman & CEO, Fox Corporation (Class B)
Twenty-First Century Fox's Lachlan Murdoch on Disney and Comcast
Lachlan Murdoch, Twenty-first Century Fox co-executive chairman, sits down with CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin at The New York Times' Dealbook conference to discuss Disney and Comcast.
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About Lachlan Murdoch
In a February 2025 episode of Australian Story, Lachlan Murdoch described his family as "an ordinary family with ordinary family issues in perhaps extraordinary circumstances" and said he is "conservative economically" and "more liberal on social policy." He noted that when people tell him to think a certain way, he is "more inclined to think a different way." The program examined his relationship with his father, Rupert Murdoch, and his path to leadership at Fox. In March 2022, Murdoch delivered a speech at the launch of the Centre for the Australian Way of Life at the Institute of Public Affairs. He argued that Australia's COVID-19 lockdowns involved "surrendering personal liberties" and said the media's job is "to question these policies" and "hold our elected officials to account." He criticized YouTube and other tech platforms for what he called "ensuring that only the current orthodox view is allowed" and said Australia is "one of the most tolerant, generous, independent, and multicultural countries in human history." In a May 2022 appearance, Murdoch described Tom Brady as a "partner" for Fox Sports and said the company was "happily on the sidelines watching this bloodbath in the SVOD market" as competitors like Netflix lost subscribers.
Transcript (11 segments)
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Interviewer0:10
Murdoch doesn't speak publicly very often with us. In no bazaar, our employees and our colleagues within those businesses, and so the journey to sell such a large part of the business to Disney was one that took some time and took some time for us to really think about where the industry is going, what the challenges we saw on the horizon for the entertainment part of the business, but also about where those assets could sit that would actually make them more viable and stronger than they were just with us. So probably 18 months ago, we got a first phone call from a phone company who was interested. Our stock was certainly undervalued, you could see that on every spreadsheet of everybody.
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Lachlan Murdoch1:11
I thought about 18 feet owning Time Warner. We didn't think Time Warner would be a better run media company. They're a very well-run media company, but they weren't necessarily going to be better, they weren't going to be making better creative decisions, putting better shows on air because they were owned by a phone company. So it was easy to say we didn't understand the strategic fit with Verizon. We didn't see our assets as being stronger. But then a few months later, when Bob Iger called, we did. And we had already had this in our mind: would there ever be a time when we would sell? When Bob Iger called, we immediately saw this actually made a great deal of strategic sense. So my brother and I and my father, we sat down, we went to my father's office, and we had a long conversation about it. And we could see the entertainment assets like FX, businesses like National Geographic.
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Interviewer2:10
James's well, we knew what the conversation was really about. And we talk every day, and we're all very transparent and open with each other. And I think we all agreed when we saw on paper that the assets that we were selling to Disney would do incredibly well under Disney ownership. Is there any part of you personally that thought, you know, I get to run this big empire in the future? I think your first thought is shareholders, right? Your first thought is where can we get our business and our value to the point where Disney can get it within a couple of years, right? In the same timeframe as Disney. And we were honest with ourselves. We said no, we believe in these assets, we believe in their growth, but under Disney ownership they were stronger and made more strategic sense than under our ownership. And of course Disney couldn't buy the TV network news. It fit well within a well-positioned standalone business.
Did you have any idea when you first sold, when the deal was first consummated with Disney, that there would be a bidding war for these assets from Comcast later? Because one of the most remarkable things that took place to the benefit of your shareholders and family was the emergence of Comcast in all this.
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Lachlan Murdoch3:32
Comcast was there in the beginning. They came to us shortly after Disney. At the time, we couldn't get our heads around the regulatory risk that Comcast brought with it to acquire all of our assets, which is certainly a higher risk. Our advice was that Disney didn't need regulatory risk. So Comcast was certainly showing that they were interested, but that we could get a higher price if we could get a bit more going. So we felt there was more.
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Interviewer4:10
There was something about Comcast. It felt like you did not want to sell to Comcast. There were these messages that would be sent effectively in the newspapers where your father would have dinner with Bob Iger the day before the next bidding round.
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Lachlan Murdoch4:30
I don't think that's true either. We would absolutely have sold to Comcast. There was a very high risk around some of our assets. The way it's ended up, which is Comcast has ended up winning the bidding war to buy some of Sky, I think works very well.
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Interviewer4:48
Are you disappointed about that?
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Lachlan Murdoch4:50
No, I had outcome. No, I think Brian, we're not.
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Interviewer5:12
For it to work for Disney and to create an OTT service and other things to actually compete against Netflix, they're going to have to spend a lot of money. This is what Barry Diller told me just a couple weeks ago down a couple blocks from here at the Economic Club about Netflix and competing with them. He said that Netflix ran right in front of everybody and they have such a lead that there is nobody that's going to compete with them at that level ever. What do you think of that?
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Lachlan Murdoch5:38
I think you have to look at Netflix as well. I disagree with Barry. I think you have to look at Netflix as two businesses: there's the distribution business, right? And you have to have scale in the distribution business. And then you obviously have the creative content generation that people are watching. You know, more and more, you need scale. With a service you could get to, and I think your guest before said you can get to 2 or 3 million subscribers like CBS All Access, right? But then you get capped. You need to have the scale of 20, 30, 50 million subscribers to really have enough significant scale to make that a real business.