With Tumblr acquired, Yahoo enters crowded bidding pool for Hulu
Coming off the heels of a $1.1 billion acquisition of popular social media blogging site Tumblr, Yahoo announced on Friday its entry into the bidding for digital video property Hulu.
News Corp, Comcast and Walt Disney received word on Friday that their jointly-held
Hulu LLC digital video concern has attracted Yahoo to the bidding ,
as Reuters reported.
Hulu has established itself as the market leader in the premium digital video space, carrying hosts of popular long-form video programming from network television and national cable outlets.
Yahoo's acquisition would further develop the search engine's premium content strategy and would mark the second recent high-visibility investment for the company, following their $1.1 billion purchase of the social media blogging property
Tumblr.
Yahoo joins the company of numerous other bidders, including KKR & Co., DirecTV, Time Warner Cable Inc., Guggenheim Digital, the Chernin Group LLC and a joint offer from Silver Lake Management LLC and talent agency William Morris Endeavor Entertainment LLC,
according to Businessweek.
The escalation of the Hulu bidding comes just days after it was
reported by the Chicago Tribune that Hulu's three television-oriented owners were planning to control as much as 90 percent of Hulu's advertising inventory.
Yahoo's shares were up over 1 percent in a choppy day on Wall Street on Friday.