Yahoo Bids On Hulu Says Source

Hulu has been a source of rumors for months now, with word surfacing in March that the video service's board is looking into selling the service. Not too long after that, sources began popping up claiming various entities have been in talks with or placed bids on Hulu, including one of its owner's former president. Now another source has surfaced, this one telling the folks over at AllThingsD that Yahoo! has placed a bid for the platform.

The source is someone said to be familiar with the matter, having said Yahoo! submitted the bid for Hulu earlier this morning. How much the company reportedly offered – and in return for what – wasn't specified, and Yahoo! isn't commenting on the matter. This follows a previous attempt in its part to buy a different video site, DailyMotion, which ultimately fell through.

Yahoo! isn't the only company that is looking into buying it, however, with other alleged interested entities including Directv, KKR, The Chernin Group, Guggenheim Digital, Silverlake and William Moriss Endeavor, as well as Time Warner Cable. As we reported on April 5, The Chernin Group was started by Peter Chernin, who was previously one of the individuals at the helm of Hulu in its hayday, eventually leaving to form his own company, which has holdings in companies like Pandora. The Group reportedly placed a $500 million bid on Hulu.

This rumor follows a Yahoo! acquisition of Tumblr on May 20th for a hefty $1.1 billion, with the former company promising it won't screw up the service. Such a deal had been rumored for weeks before it happened. A few days later, on May 23, Yahoo then nabbed up PlayerScale as well, a software infrastructure for multi-platform gaming.

According to the source, interested companies were told by Hulu to have their bids in by Wednesday of this week, but it isn't out of the realm of possibility that other bids could be entertained in the future. For now we'll have to wait for more details to emerge, including what a Hulu purchase would look like for the winning bidder, but for the time being there's the possibility we might see Yahoo nab up another big service in the near future.

SOURCE: AllThingsD