Yahoo Hulu Bid Filed Friday, Sources Say
A Yahoo Hulu bid was filed on Friday morning, according to sources familiar with the offer.
Several media outlets including The Huffington Post and Reuters were confirming the move, which if true, means that Yahoo is now one of seven competing bidders.
The others include Time Warner Cable, DirecTV, News Corp president Peter Chernin, and private equity firms Guggenheim Digital Media, KKR, and Silver Lake Partners.
Walt Disney Co., Comcast’s NBCUniversal, and News Corp, are the current owners of the television and film streaming service.
The Yahoo Hulu bid was (of course) not disclosed as of Friday afternoon, but this past Monday, the company made a successful all-cash bid for Tumblr, acquiring the blogging service for $1.1 billion.
HuffPo noted that Yahoo had only $1.2 billion in cash on its books at the time of the Tumblr deal, so acquiring Hulu in a cash transaction would be next to impossible, especially considering an earlier report that Chernin is bidding around $500 million excluding an extra sum to cover Hulu’s debt and programming.
Sources close to Reuters, however, believe Hulu could command as much as $2 billion.
One company no longer interested, sources say, is Amazon. Variety reports that the web retail giant (and now streaming provider) was interested but decided to bow out.
Neither Yahoo nor Amazon representatives have responded to requests for comment, so expect more updates from The Inquisitr until a final decision is reached.
Hulu’s advertising revenue is estimated at $695 million. Here’s a bit more on the reversal of fortune for the once-ignored service:
Personally, and I say this with the admission that I am not an economist, it would be hard to imagine the bid that Yahoo placed, if they in fact placed it, being lower than the Tumblr acquisition price. The content partnerships alone seem more worthwhile than the blogging service, but maybe that’s just me.
What do you think the Yahoo Hulu bid was for, and do you think Hulu is worth closer to Chernin’s $500 million offer or the $2 billion highball?
[Image via Flickr Creative Commons]
