Yahoo recently spent $1.1 billion acquiring the blogging website Tumblr, a youth-oriented website that has over 300 million users and receives 24 billion usage minutes per month according to CNET.
Now, Yahoo will attempt to further its revenue stream by throwing its hat in with Directv, Time Warner Cable, William Morris Endeavor, KKR, Guggenheim Digital and The Chernin Group by making a bid between $600 and $800 million for the popular video streaming website Hulu.com according to AllThingsD.
Hulu, a video streaming website with over 4 million subscribers paying $7.99 per month offers movies, original programming, currently airing television shows and more than 70,000 full TV episodes. CNET reports that in 2012, the site generated $695 million in revenue, boosted from an estimated $420 million from 2011. Despite its recent pricey purchase of Tumblr, Yahoo posted revenue of about $5 billion from 2012 and is a good contender to acquire the site if the current owners wish to sell.
Hulu, currently jointly owned by Disney, Comcast and News Corp. was put up for sale in 2011. The owners were looking for an opening bid of $2 billion in exchange for content licenses that would run for two to three years. However, they pulled the site back off the market after a few months.
Last month, former News Corp. COO Peter Chernin put the site back on the sales market starting at $500 million and offering. The company has not had a formal M&A process and has instead asked prospective buyers to make an offer by Wednesday, opening the doors for more bidders to come to light later in the week.
Yahoo is making this bid to get into the video streaming game after a failed attempt to buy a large stake in a French site called Dailymotion. Conflicts with the company and the French government prevented that deal from going through.
