The New York Times reports Univision’s purchase of Gawker is part of Univision’s effort to expand its portfolio of digital media companies.
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Peter Thiel and Hulk Hogan may have been the catalysts, but the money is now on the table as Gawker, the ferociously independent news source, has been bought by media giant Univision in a winning $135 million bid at auction.
A U.S. bankruptcy judge still needs to sign off on the case, and the libel judgment funds will be set aside while Gawker appeals its court case. Then, monies will need to be set aside for Gawker’s appeal in the Hulk Hogan lawsuit, in which they’ve been ordered to pay $140 million in damages. Gawker is appealing the ruling, but in the meantime, Hogan remains the company’s largest unsecured creditor.
Univision Holdings won a bankruptcy auction Tuesday to acquire United States digital media pioneer Gawker Media, outbidding media company Ziff Davis.
“I had begun coming out to people I knew, and I planned to continue on my own terms”, Thiel wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece published Monday.
Gawker Media’s properties include the flagship gossip site Gawker, the female-oriented Jezebel, the sports site Deadspin, the tech-oriented Gizmodo and Jalopnik, which is aimed at auto enthusiasts.
Denton said in June he believed Gawker was worth $276 million.
Gawker and Denton were influential forces in the growth of online media, developing a direct, conversational and sometimes-slashing style that dispensed with many journalistic conventions and was widely imitated.
Denton buying back the Gawker.com site would be the best end to this whole debacle, as it has been the main rabble-rouser, but doesn’t quite fit the Ziff Davis style.
Mark Patricof, the banker handling the bankruptcy auction, confirmed the deal to Recode. In April, when it took full control of Fusion after Disney exited the joint venture, Univision created The Fusion Media Group, which includes Fusion (TV and digital), The Onion and Flama, a video site targeted at US -born Hispanic millennials. It also launched Fusion, its own TV network and digital publisher.
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The case gained additional notoriety when it was revealed Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel had secretly bankrolled Hogan’s lawsuit.
