(Bloomberg) -- Comcast Corp. bid highest in a quick-fire auction of Sky Plc, dealing Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox Inc. a potential knock-out blow in their battle for Europe’s largest satellite broadcaster.

The U.S. cable TV provider offered 17.28 pounds a share for London-based Sky, compared with Fox’s 15.67-pound bid, the U.K. Takeover Panel said Saturday. Comcast’s proposal values Sky at 29.7 billion pounds ($39 billion). A victory over Fox, however, won’t be sealed unless Sky investors tender their shares by an Oct. 11 deadline.

If Comcast’s bid is enough to clinch Sky, Chief Executive Officer Brian Roberts will emerge as a global TV power after conceding ownership of most of Fox’s entertainment assets in a separate bidding war to his rival, Walt Disney Co.’s Bob Iger. Comcast would also win a rare opportunity to diversify beyond the U.S. and gain global scale to compete with video streaming giant Netflix Inc.

Acquiring Sky would also expand the content and distribution model that Roberts has embraced since buying NBCUniversal seven years ago. With Sky, the Philadelphia-based company would deliver TV services to 52 million customers in the U.S. as well as European countries including U.K., Italy and Germany.

Sky also brings Comcast sought-after TV content, including rights to Premier League English soccer. It has been boosting its investment in original TV productions such as 1920s sex-and-crime saga “Babylon Berlin” and “Britannia,” a period drama about the Roman conquest of Britain.

Netflix has relied on other companies’ broadband networks to distribute its lavish in-house productions and expand its global subscriber base to 130 million, and its rivals are still looking for an effective response.

Crucially for Comcast, Sky has a growing video-streaming business. Roberts has said he was “terribly impressed” with Sky’s market-leading Q box platform, which is also a rich source of data on customer viewing behavior. Comcast estimates that owning Sky will create $500 million in synergies, partly through selling Sky content in the U.S. and NBC programming in Europe.

Fourth Time Lucky?

Buying Sky would mean Comcast generates a fourth of its sales outside of the U.S., up from 9 percent now. It would also represent a victory in Comcast’s chequered history of dealmaking. While Comcast acquired NBCUniversal and DreamWorks Animation over the past decade, it failed in attempts to buy Disney in 2004, Time Warner Cable Inc. in 2015 and Fox in July.

Then in July Disney muscled Comcast aside with a $71 billion deal for Fox that brought it franchises such as the “X-Men” and hit shows like “The Simpsons.” The loss of Sky partly stymies Iger’s goal of establishing more direct ties to consumers and expanding his international business.

Fox forced Roberts’ hand by raising its bid during the auction under Iger’s direction. That may have been an astute move by Iger, who now gets more cash for Fox’s 39 percent stake in Sky and a rival with less potential borrowing firepower to fund future growth.

--With assistance from Anousha Sakoui.

To contact the reporters on this story: Joe Mayes in London at jmayes9@bloomberg.net;Gerry Smith in New York at gsmith233@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rebecca Penty at rpenty@bloomberg.net, Thomas Pfeiffer, Rob Golum

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