Comcast challenges Disney for Twenty-First Century Fox

— Comcast and Disney are on the verge of a head-to-head bidding war for Fox’s entertainment properties.

The potential battle for Twenty-First Century Fox comes as traditional entertainment companies try to amass more properties to compete better with technology companies such as Amazon and Netflix for viewers’ attention — and dollars.

Comcast said Wednesday that it’s in the “advanced stages” of making an offer. The company did not provide details, other than to say that its all-cash offer would have a higher value than Disney’s current, $52.4 billion all-stock offer. The Wall Street Journal and others reported earlier that Comcast had lined up $60 billion in cash to challenge Disney for media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s company.

Larry Downes, project director at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy, said Comcast’s interest highlights the fact that content is becoming more important as ways to deliver content proliferate. Cable companies like Comcast are no longer competing only with satellite alternatives such as DirecTV, but also stand-alone services such as Netflix and cable-like online bundles through Sony, AT&T and others.

“Those categories mean less and less all the time — who is a distributor and who is a creator,” he said. “Content is king, the most important thing. Distribution can happen over a variety of mechanisms.”

Disney already started its own sports streaming service and plans an entertainment-focused one late next year featuring movies and shows from its own studios, which include Marvel, Pixar and “Star Wars” creator Lucasfilm.

With the Fox deal, Disney would get more content for those services — through the studios behind the Avatar movies, “The Simpsons” and “Modern Family,” along with National Geographic. Marvel would get back the characters previously licensed to Fox, reuniting X-Men with the Avengers.

“If Comcast won these assets from the arms of Disney, it would be a ‘devastating blow’ to ... Disney’s streaming ambitions going forward,” GBH Insights analyst Dan Ives said.

Comcast, meanwhile, has been leading the way in marrying pipes with the entertainment that flows through them. It bought NBCUniversal’s cable channels and movie studio in 2013 and added Dreamworks Animation in 2016.