 "Hulu buyout speeds up with four companies entering the bidding war")
With the Hulu buy-out speeding up, companies which were looking to take-over the video streaming service had until last week to put in their bids. From what has been reported so far, four companies have put their bids in to buy Hulu.
According to a report by Reuters, former News Corp president Peter Chernin, private equity fund Guggenheim Digital Media, satellite operator DirecTV, and cable operator Time Warner Cable have all put in bids for Hulu.
While Hulu has supposedly been looking for a buyer for the past few years, recently quite a few companies including Yahoo! and Amazon have expressed interest.
Hulu sees the bidding war quicken its pace, with four companies putting in their bids…
According to sources that spoke to AllthingsD, Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer was said to have met up with the video streaming company’s corporate owners earlier this month. With her aggressive stance right now about buying over businesses, that comes as no surprise.
The company’s owners, which include Walt Disney and News Corp, had put the company up for sale in 2011 but called off the process later that year, according to sources saying Hulu “holds a unique and compelling strategic value to each of its owners.”
Since 2011, Hulu has seen some major management shifts. Co-owner Providence Equity Partners sold its stake in Hulu sometime later while Comcast’s NBC Universal gave up its say in management matters because of regulatory restrictions. Adding to that, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar said in January that he would step down in the first quarter.
The remaining owners, Disney and News Corp., have disagreed on how best to operate a Web service that streams TV programs and other videos. News Corp., which owns Fox, has been reported to want Hulu to become a subscription-only service, while Disney prefers a free service supported by ads.
The interest that media companies are showing in Hulu comes as no surprise. The streaming service reports that it has more than 4 million subscribers, which pay $7.99 per month. This is in addition to advertising revenue. The site also says it generated roughly $700 million in revenue last year. The Los Angeles Times initially reported this bid on Thursday.
With inputs from Reuters
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