Dan Gilbert’s Bid To Acquire Yahoo! Falls To Verizon
Dan Gilbert made a bid to acquire Yahoo!, but he ultimately lost out on a prime opportunity to Verizon, who won the bid.
Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert attempted to buy Yahoo!, but his bid lost out to Verizon. Verizon paid $4.83 billion to acquire Yahoo!, which is well below the $44 billion that Microsoft offered in 2008 and the $125 billion that the company was worth during the dot.com boom, according to BBC.
This could mean that Yahoo! will eventually phase out. That is crucial for the future of NBA live streaming over the internet. Sure, it won’t affect NBA League Pass, but there are bigger implications.
Yahoo! Sports recently launched The Vertical, the website’s NBA division led by senior editor Adrian Wojnarowski. Wojnarowski is one of, if not the most connected NBA reporters across all media outlets. But there is more to it than that, it’s about what The Vertical, and Yahoo! Sports, has done in an effort to engage more viewers.
The Vertical launched a live, studio-based show out of New York on June 23rd, the night of the NBA Draft. With Woj’s ability to drop “Woj bombs”, breaking news before any other reporter, they were certain to do will. It was a slam dunk.
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The Vertical’s live coverage featured Chris Mannix, front office insider Bobby Marks, Shams Charania and Woj. They also had guests from Draft Express in Jonathan Givony and Mike Schmitz. There coverage truly separated themselves from ESPN’s in ways that they couldn’t compete.
While ESPN had first access to player interviews and had the best international basketball analyst in Fran Fraschilla, The Vertical exceeded in almost every other area.
The Vertical broke the majority of draft choices and trades live on the air. If a viewer wanted to know what was happening in real time, they were watching The Vertical’s coverage. Not only were they first to this, but they were also accurate.
Now they had a similar show as free agency officially began on July 1st, and ESPN did not. But what The Vertical proved is that there is a market for live streaming television shows and sporting events, as Yahoo! showed with a NFL game in London in 2015, that is pretty much untapped, and Yahoo! is gaining the upper hand on every other online sports website.
That is one of the many valuable aspects that Gilbert missed out on. While Gilbert already had a big part in Quicken Loans’ and Fathead’s developments, this would’ve been the biggest business deal he’s pulled off in his lifetime.
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If he were able to pull it off, it could have developed jobs in the city of Cleveland, and Gilbert’s hometown of Detroit, MI. Alas, he fell short and Yahoo! will be under Verizon’s possession in 2017.