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A titanic battle against European television operator Sky between Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox, and the American cable giant, Comcast, ends Saturday in a rare blind auction.
Sky's base of 23 million subscriptions and English Premier League football rights make it one of the most profitable and powerful TV companies in Europe.
The auction pits two traditional US media giants seeking content to prevent viewers from switching to broadcast services such as Netflix.
The latest Comcast offer values Sky at 26 billion euros (34 billion, 29 billion euros).
Fox has raised its bid to 24.5 billion euros and will decide Saturday which will end with the highest bid in a complex process put out of sight.
The confrontation will help determine if the Australian-born American citizen Murdoch manages to acquire the 61% stake in Sky that he has not yet but that he's been looking for for a long time.
The two-year saga is also reshaping the multimedia entertainment landscape in the United States by allowing Walt Disney Co. to complete its mega-merger with Fox.
The Saturday auction is therefore transformed into a proxy battle between Comcast and Disney for Sky.
Comcast's holdings already include Universal Studios and the US television channels NBC and CNBC.
The Disney empire extends from its movie studios and theme parks to the US NBC television channel and to the various ESPN sports channels.
Critics say that allowing Murdoch – who owns the major British newspaper headlines The Times and The Sun – total control of Sky News would give him too much influence in the UK news business.
Fox has proposed to remedy this by selling the television news channel to Disney, in case of total control of Sky.
It is rare for a takeover of this size and impact to be determined at a 24-hour blind auction that will end at 16:00 GMT.
The UK Takeover Board decided to follow this path after none of the offers were deemed final and asked for "an orderly framework for the resolution of this competitive situation".
The POA Panel will not declare an auction winner but will simply indicate the size of the offers made.
Sky's shareholders will then have several days to decide which suitor they find most attractive and a final deal will be reached.
It set 11 October as the deadline "by which the offer of the Offeror may become or may be declared unconditional" by shareholders.
Sky is currently trading at 15.85 euros per share – above the latest Comcast bid price of 14.75 euros.
Welcome to a rare auction
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