Prashant Rao

The cable and broadband giant Comcast said it was abandoning its bid to acquire a major chunk of 21st Century Fox but would continue its push to win control of the British satellite broadcaster Sky, a move that appeared to end a complex bidding war for Rupert Murdoch’s media company.

The Walt Disney Company sharply increased its offer for 21st Century Fox June 20, as it looks to win a bidding war with Comcast for Rupert Murdoch’s entertainment conglomerate. In a quickly issued statement agreeing to the sweetened deal, 21st Century Fox said that the revamped offer from Disney, now valued at $71.3 billion, was “superior to the proposal” made by Comcast last week. The bid by Disney is 35 percent higher than its earlier offer and about $6 billion more than Comcast’s. Disney’s chief executive, Robert A.

Britain’s culture secretary, Matt Hancock, said that he was unlikely to block the American cable giant Comcast’s proposed takeover of the British satellite broadcaster Sky, the latest twist in a merger battle between Comcast and Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox. Hancock, said he was not inclined to intervene in Comcast’s $30.7 billion bid for Sky because the “the proposed merger does not raise concerns in relation to public interest considerations which would meet the threshold for intervention.”

Britain asked regulators on March 16 to investigate whether 21st Century Fox’s $14.3 billion deal to take full control of the British satellite television giant Sky would give the media mogul Rupert Murdoch too much control over the country’s media landscape. The takeover for the 61 percent of Sky that 21st Century Fox does not already own was agreed on in December and is the second such effort to combine the two companies since 2011. The latest attempt quickly raised a wave of criticism in Britain, where Murdoch already holds several media interests. Along with the investigation in Britain, the merger is expected to face a review by antitrust regulators in the European Union.