Hulu is no longer up for sale.
Hulu's three parent companies -- 21st Century Fox, NBCUniversal and The Walt Disney Company -- called off the sale on Friday and announced that they would instead collectively pump $750 million more into Hulu to ensure "future growth."
“We believe the best path forward for Hulu is a meaningful recapitalization that will further accelerate its growth under the current ownership structure,” Chase Carey, president and COO of 21st Century Fox, said in a statement. “We had meaningful conversations with a number of potential partners and buyers, each with impressive plans and offers to match, but with 21st Century Fox and Disney fully aligned in our collective vision and goals for the business, we decided to continue to empower the Hulu team, in this fashion, to continue the incredible momentum they've built over the last few years.”
Hulu initially attracted bids from several big name companies in late May, including DirecTV, Guggenheim Digital, Time Warner Cable and Yahoo. As of earlier this week, the list of bidders still in the running for Hulu had reportedly been whittled down to just two: DirecTV and a partnership between AT&T and Peter Chernin.
The news was first reported by Jon Erlichman at Bloomberg West, who suggested that the bidding process may have been part of an effort from Hulu's owners to assess the true value of the streaming video service.
This isn't the first time that Hulu's owners have called off a potential sale of the company. They did the same thing back in late 2011, noting the "strategic value" that Hulu had for each of the owners.