Hulu’s Up for Grabs, but Netflix Ain’t Buying
The sale of Hulu, the popular video streaming service currently being auctioned off by owners News Corp, Walt Disney, and Comcast’s NBCUniversal, is entering the next stage, but trouble is in the air. The news that Hulu is up for grabs was confirmed last week by Disney CEO Robert Iger at the Allen & Co. media conference in Idaho. Now sources familiar with the matter say that the first talks with potential buyers closed last week, and they will be given a more thorough demo of the service. WSJ reports:
“Initial presentations to potential suitors mostly wrapped up last week, according to people familiar with the matter. Next, interested bidders will comb through the business in greater detail, digging into the site’s complex content agreements with its media owners…”
The same sources also say that Amazon, Yahoo, Microsoft, DirecTV and Google are among the potential buyers that participated and expressed internet to buy Hulu during this first phase. Google could gain a lot in buying Hulu, and subsequently integrating it somehow with Google+ and YouTube, but the same can be said of Amazon. The Amazon Prime VOD service already offers customers a selection of over 5,000, a number that would grow significantly should a deal between the two companies come to fruition. This is probably not true for Netflix, which has so far shown no interest to buy its long-time competitor.
Netflix and Hulu have very different business models; the former relies mainly on user subscription, while Hulu is primarily advertising based, and Hulu’s owners would have no interest in selling to the company due to the fact it would reduce the number of suppliers for their content.
Another interesting twist is that Netflix is boosting the competiton in a way – the video streaming service leverages AWS to host petabytes of data. Hulu on the other hand, has been doing something else; it recently announced Hulu Plus will become available for Xbox LIVE users.
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