LOS ANGELES — The Walt Disney Co. prevailed in the bidding war for much of Rupert Murdoch’s empire after Comcast Corp. said Thursday it was dropping the fight for 21st Century Fox’s entertainment assets to focus on its bid for European pay-TV giant Sky.

Comcast’s early morning announcement hands a key victory to Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger, who agreed to spend $71 billion for the Fox assets, which include the company’s prolific television and movie studios, cable channels FX and National Geographic and international properties in India and Latin America.

For Comcast, continuing to pursue the Fox assets became too expensive — and a big stretch for wary shareholders.

Comcast would have to offer more than $80 billion to stay competitive with Disney’s $71-billion bid.

Each additional offer for Fox raised the price of the Sky television service because Fox owns 39 percent of Sky, which Murdoch co-founded in the late 1980s.

The Disney-Fox transaction is expected to transform Hollywood into a land of few giants. Disney is taking the big swing because it feels it needs greater scale to compete with Netflix, Google, Facebook, Amazon.com and Apple Inc.

In early morning trading on Wall Street, shares of Disney rose 1.6 percent, while Comcast’s were up 2.5 percent as the bidding war ended. Shares of 21st Century Fox were down 1.6 percent.

For Murdoch, the sale of key assets signals a retreat after half a century of empire building. However, the Australian mogul plans to hold on to core assets: Fox News Channel, the Fox Broadcast network, two national cable sports channels and a string of television stations, including KTTV Channel 11 in Los Angeles.

The Justice Department gave a quick OK to Disney’s bid as long as it sells Fox’s 22 regional sports networks, including Prime Ticket and Fox Sports West in Los Angeles. Disney agreed. Fox shareholders vote on Disney’s sweetened offer July 27.

Most analysts long speculated Disney had the edge because its deal posed fewer regulatory hurdles than a Comcast-Fox merger. The Disney-Fox merger review lasted five months.

Although Disney and Fox have a similar asset mix, Comcast has the complication of owning pay-TV and high-speed internet services. Comcast is the nation’s largest provider of broadband internet service — a fact that troubled the Justice Department before. When the department said last week it would appeal the merger of AT&T and Time Warner, the door slammed on Comcast’s chances of persuading Murdoch and his executives that a regulatory review of a Comcast-Fox tie-up would go fast and smooth.

In late June, Disney upped its ante with an offer of $71.3 billion — or $38 a share — for Fox. Comcast had made a $65 billion all-cash bid.

Comcast could not overcome the head start enjoyed by Iger, who began courting Murdoch last summer at Murdoch’s vineyard. Talks heated up in the fall and, in December, Fox agreed to sell to Disney.