LONDON — The same type of blind auction used to pick players in fantasy football leagues could decide the fate of Sky PLC SKY, +0.41% , a media company that employs 30,000 people and has a stock-market value of $36 billion.
Comcast Corp. CMCSA, +1.31% on Saturday is slated to bid against a team of Walt Disney Co DIS, +1.67% and 21st Century Fox Inc. FOX, -0.14% in a day-long auction here that—if it goes down to the wire—will culminate in the two sides submitting secret bids to a British regulator. A winner will be disclosed later in the day.
Blind-auction strategy is complex, as each side tries to figure out how much it needs to pay to win while trying to avoid overspending. It has fostered a cottage industry of auction consultants, many of whom hold doctorates in game theory, a branch of math that studies how players in strategic contests make decisions. While investment bankers are used to engaging in such high-dollar auctions, it is unusual to have a government-mandated “sealed-bid” process for such a big, publicly traded company.
“Game theory as a topic is well-understood by academics and has long been studied, but game theorists who also understand the market context are not that common,” said Steve Blythe, who oversees cellular-airwave auctions for French wireless carrier Orange SA.
An expanded version of this story can be found at WSJ.com
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