Media Monster

Time Warner Buys Bleacher Report For Under $200 Million

Bleacher Report takes a lot of heat for its content, but it appears that their business model has paid off. The rapid-fire sports content website (which gets around 40 million unique visitors a month, according to their figures, and 10 million according to CNN and Bloomberg) was reportedly purchased by media giant Time Warner’s Turner Broadcasting System for just under $200 million.

Time Warner’s Turner Broadcasting, which owns the cable networks TNT, TBS and CNN, is trying to capitalize on its sports programming by expanding online. Bleacher Report, founded in 2006, has about 10 million visitors a month. It gets its content from more than 6,000 contributors — most of whom write for free — who churn out more than 1,000 articles a day.

The vast majority of Bleacher Report’s contributors are unpaid (and oft-criticized), but they have made some paid hires in the past year or so while trying to improve their image. According to Bloomberg, they’ve raised about $40 million in venture capital, which helps explain their decked-out office.

Deadspin notes that the website brings in about $30 million in annual revenue.

[Bloomberg; image via]

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