Trouble online news and gossip media company Gawker Media has been bought by Spanish broadcasting company Univision in an auction yesterday for a sum of $135 million. Gawker Media has been in trouble ever since it lost the invasion of privacy case against wrestling star Hulk Hogan and had been asked to pay $140 million in damages by the court.
Following the completion of the auction, Gawker Media's owner Nich Denton released a statement regarding the development. He stated, "Gawker Media Group has agreed this evening to sell our business and popular brands to Univision, one of America's largest media companies that is rapidly assembling the leading digital media group for millennial and multicultural audiences. I am pleased that our employees are protected and will continue their work under new ownership - disentangled from the legal campaign against the company. We could not have picked an acquirer more devoted to vibrant journalism."
A report in the website Recode provided further details on the finer points of the deal, "The deal won't be official for a bit. For starters, a U.S. bankruptcy court judge needs to sign off on the transaction. When it is final, the judgment funds will be set aside while Gawker appeals its court case; eventually the money will go to the side that wins. Whatever the result of the case, the auction is a disappointing conclusion for Denton, who founded the company in 2002.
Last year, as rival media companies like Vice, BuzzFeed and Vox Media (which owns this site) were raising money at increasingly high valuations, Denton was arguing that his company was worth $250 million or more. Univision, which until recently was best known as a Spanish-language TV network, has been expanding its digital reach in recent years by acquiring satire site The Onion and The Root, a publication aimed at African-Americans. And earlier this year it picked up full ownership of Fusion, the network and digital publisher aimed at millennials, which it originally launched in conjunction with Disney."
