NEWS
NEWS
NEWS
Move over, Salesforce and Google: Disney also might bid for Twitter
Interest in the potential acquisition of Twitter Inc. continues to rise with a new report Monday claiming that Walt Disney Co. is also considering putting forward a bid for the company.
Bloomberg broke the news, quoting people familiar with the matter as saying that that Disney has hired a financial adviser to evaluate a possible bid.
News of Disney joining the fray followed reports Friday that Software as a Service (SaaS) giant Salesforce.com Inc. and Google Inc. parent Alphabet Inc. were looking at acquiring Twitter, with another report also claiming that Microsoft Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc. may also be in the mix as possible buyers.
A potential buy of Twitter could have a number of synergies with Disney, given that the company owns stakes in Hulu Inc., trendy online millennial focused media outlet Vice, and Major League Baseball’s live-streaming platform BAMTech, the latter of which currently has a deal to provide live baseball and ice hockey games to Twitter’s new streaming video service.
In addition, Disney also owns ABC and ESPN, providing both cross-over and promotional opportunities.
Streaming play?
Interestingly it may be Twitter’s streaming video service that is of particular interest to Disney, with one analyst telling Bloomberg that “It’s a video distribution play…What Disney has to think about is what is its place in a post cord-cutting world. They are investing in technology for distribution — and this would give them the platform to reach audiences around the world.”
Disney buying Twitter would automatically deliver a wealth of video content to the service at no additional cost, potentially subsidizing the otherwise struggling core microblogging service, while Disney would obtain a platform from which it could deliver and monetize its various movie, television and sports products to a wider audience.
Given that Twitter’s efforts in delivering live streams of events are still in their early days it’s hard to put a value on that aspect of the company, but likewise it’s unlikely a co-incidence that serious speculation that several companies may be looking to buy the business has come after Twitter’s decision to enter the live streaming space.
It may be months until we see a formal bid, particularly with some companies said to only be in “talks” at this stage, but given the flurry of news, it’s not impossible that there may be a formal offer on the table before the end of the year.
Shares in Twitter rose 3.22 percent on the news to close $23.37 for the day, giving it a market cap of just over $20 billion.
Image credit: /Wikimedia Commons/CC by 2.0
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