According to BI, Yahoo would be willing to purchase on-demand streaming TV service Hulu for $2 billion, as long as certain demands are met.
Hulu is owned by Disney (ABC), News Corp. (Fox), Comcast (NBCU) and private equity firm Providence.
Yahoo is only willing to make the deal if Hulu guarantees them 4-5 years of exclusive access to the media content.
Hulu, on the other hand, seems to be only willing to give 2 years of exclusivity, albeit with 5 years guaranteed access to the content.
Says one source:
If [Hulu's content creating owners] came out and said, we’ve renewed [Hulu's exclusive rights] for four years at the same terms we have today – it’s really easy to model [a valuation between] $1 billion and $2 billion – maybe more.
Without four or five years of exclusive streaming rights to TV shows and movies, Hulu is not worth anything.
If Hulu does offer 5 year exclusivity, Yahoo would have enough time to “build enough equity with consumers that you’ve created a real leader in premium content and premium advertising,” adds the source.
Without exclusivity, Yahoo (and other bidders) could simply just bid for the rights to stream the content in the future, as it would cost significantly less. In fact, when the exclusivity period for Hulu’s current content ends, Google and Amazon are expected to bid hundreds of millions of dollars for the rights.
Result for: streaming tv
The UK-based company Velocix (formerly known as CacheLogic), has announced that beginning today it will be “offering live Streaming television content with a hybrid P2P live streaming client.”
So far live streaming has been a challenge to content providers as the audience for live streaming events are all trying to access the video simultaneously, putting a strain on resources.
The popular IPTV platform Joost recently made an attempt to live stream some NCAA “March Madness” basketball games via a partnership with CBS but “connections to CBS feeds were reported to have been dropped at inopportune periods.”
Velocix, on the other hand, offers a BitTorrent-compatible hybrid P2P client “which turns each viewer into a sort of peer host for additional viewers.” The streams are then available in Flash format or Windows Media format.
The company also says it has made deals with the BBC and Babelgum as well as Bollywood.tv, and Chic.tv.
