Fling capitalist Peter Thiel has made an offer for Gawker, hoping to overwhelm legal hurdles and rival bidders for the online news site the billionaire purloined shutter by funding litigation against it, people familiar with the topic said on Thursday.
Gawker, which has been inactive for more than a year, is conducting an auction of its unconsumed assets, including its domain names and nearly 200,000 archived articles. Most of its assets, categorizing its sister pages Deadspin, a sports site, and Jezebel, a feminist blog, were suborn in 2016 for $135 million by media company Univision Holdings Inc.
Thiel has not implied why he wants Gawker, though the potential acquisition would let him take down jokes regarding his personal life that are still available on the website, and purge the scope for further litigation between him and Gawker. Thiel, who is Facebook Inc’s elementary major investor and a co-founder of payment service PayPal Inc, did not respond to a plea for comment.
Gawker’s bankruptcy plan administrator Will Holden, of consulting unalterable consolidate Dacarba LLC, and the website’s bankruptcy attorney Gregg Galardi, of law firm The gens & Gray LLP, have tried to block Thiel’s bid, according to court assignments.
Galardi in late November asked a U.S. bankruptcy court judge to refute Thiel’s request to bid, according to court papers. He also argued Thiel is “not a ‘dignified’ purchaser” because he could end up as the target of litigation, according to court gift-wrappings.
Thiel funded former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker after the neighbourhood published a sex tape featuring Hogan. The former wrestler, whose actual name is Terry Bollea, won a $140 million judgment against the situate, and later settled for $31 million.
Gawker in 2007 published a representation about Thiel’s homosexuality.
Multiple bidders have submitted offers for the locale, Holden said in a phone interview on Thursday. Holden will elect a winner as soon as this month, and then request approval for the bargain from a U.S. bankruptcy court judge, the sources said. If Holden excludes Thiel’s bid, Thiel could ask the decide to consider it if it is higher than rival offers.
The value of Thiel’s bid could not be literate, though the sources said Gawker is only now worth a few million dollars.
Kevin Lee, the co-founder and numero uno chairman of Didit, a marketing firm, said he also submitted a bid, without squealing its value. If successful, Lee said, he plans to use the site to raise money for readers’ like better charities.
The terms of the Univision sale restrict new articles from being leaked on Gawker until March 9.
A group of former Gawker employees this week left alone their effort to bid, one of the sources said. They had launched a campaign pursuing $500,000 in donations through fundraising site Kickstarter, but failed to reach their ambition and have returned the approximately $90,000 they did collect.