It's been a busy month for satellite provider Dish Network (Nasdaq: DISH), which on Friday unveiled its Blockbuster Movie Pass, a new video delivery offering it hopes will outgun Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX). Today, reports say the company so far is the highest bidder for video aggregator Hulu.
But, sources tell Business Insider, the $1.9 billion bid, while topping offers from Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) and Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), may not be enough to close the deal. Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), meanwhile, may have bid as much as $4 billion, but the offer included content-deal demands that Hulu's owners--Disney (NYSE: DIS), News Corp. (Nasdaq: NWSA) and Comcast's (Nasdaq: CMCSA) NBCUniversal--unit may not be willing to consider.
Hulu's owners expected to cherry pick from a number of offers in excess of $2 billion, but the short-term content guarantees likely scared many buyers away, or had them coming in with low-ball offers looking for a short-term deal.
BI said Hulu's back-end technology might be at least as important to Dish as the content it carries.
Google's deep pockets continue to keep it in the mix, but the question remains whether Hulu's owners are willing to open the henhouse door to a company they've traditionally seen as a fox. More to the point, Hulu's owners may be getting cold feet about moving forward with any sale to anyone.
For more:
- see this BusinessInsider article
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