Bubble 2.0: YouTube for $2b?
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2006/08/24/publiceye/entry1932996.shtml
Most industry watchers predict that it may not be long until someone
does pay YouTube … a lot. With yesterday’s news that Sony Pictures
Entertainment bought Grouper, another video-sharing site, for $65
million, it appears only a matter of time before YouTube gets
acquired – some speculate for as much as $2 billion. While YouTube
itself “declined to discuss how much it would want or whether it was
up for sale,” BusinessWeek reports that if the price tag were that
high, “the pool of buyers would likely shrink to the major media
companies without a significant online video presence.” Which means
that “the
the very biggest of Big Media concerns” (i.e., those that own the
broadcast news outlets) “may not be interested,” according to analyst
Robert Routh. According to Routh, writes BusinessWeek, “the Viacoms
and Disneys of the world are unlikely contenders because, for that
kind of money, they would be better off using their existing
resources and digital presence to build their own sites.”
So we may not yet see one of the Big Three picking up YouTube …
perhaps they’ll just start creating their own. CNN, it appears, has
already done as much.